


audience of one

by Katranga



Series: Ride or Die [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Battle Arena, Dark but not too Dark, Galra Keith (Voltron), Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Solitary Confinement, and funny sometimes bc it's Lance POV and i'm me, he was raised Galra, no actual torture, recurring themes of morality and redemption, the rest of the gang show up later, touch-starved lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-11-09 02:58:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 45,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11095470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katranga/pseuds/Katranga
Summary: Keith stared at him again, like he was desperately searching for something in Lance that he couldn’t quite find. “There’s no way I’m one of you.”“Don’t be so sure,” Lance said. “All humans are different. I know plenty of grouchy people.”“Um, have I stabbed you yet? No? Then I’m not grouchy.”--Lance gets captured by the Galra and sent to a prison ship. Keith, raised Galra, visits Lance's cell, driven by the unshakable curiosity about the new prisoner who looks like him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This is my first multi-chapter fic for Voltron, so I'm excited! This is... different from what I've written for this fandom so far, but I hope you'll give it a shot. I have the majority of it written already, I'm just doing edits, but I wanted to get a chapter out so I could get some feedback and encouragement! It'll probably be about twelve chapters.  
> I think the tags cover the whole story, but if I end up missing anything, please let me know.  
> There's not a /lot/ of violence, but I'll be sure to give a heads-up in the author's note of the chapters where it's worst. Lance gets a little roughed up in this chapter.

Lance was running. Hands cuffed, no bayard, no teammates, certainly no Blue. Running was all he had left. That and the far-off hope that he’d be able to find an escape pod and… escape.

Like, he’d been captured by the Galra. All he _could_ do was escape. Because he certainly wasn’t staying on this prison ship.

If he could just get out of these cuffs, find a weapon, and get hold of a Galra hand to get past their security, he’d be set. Never mind how fast he’d have to fly to escape the Galra fleet that would surely follow him. Never mind that he was lightyears away from Voltron. Never mind that the Galra had taken his helmet, his only way of contacting his crew.

Step one was getting off this ship. That was all he could focus on. Everything else would come later. Though hopefully not too much later.

Then he ran into something. Some _one_ , specifically, who’d stepped out from behind a corner real quick.

The vice grip around his arms was instant. He struggled until he caught sight of the Galra holding him.

Though, _was_ the alien holding him Galra?

That’s what gave Lance pause.

The guy was small, shorter than Lance and lankier than any Galra soldier Lance had ever seen, though the hands wrapped around his biceps implied he was stronger than he looked. His skin seemed almost human—the right texture, not ragged and scarred like most Galra, but then again, Lance was pretty sure he’d never seen a Galra this young before.

In any case, this guy’s skin was pale purple, just enough that it might be a trick of the light, or maybe some weird space virus.

But an illness wouldn’t cause those ears. Big like a fennec fox’s, and furry, black as his shaggy hair.

His eyes weren’t that classic Galra yellow, though. They were a deep violet, with black pupils like any human, and they were glued on Lance.

“Why do you look like me?” asked the Galra who was not a Galra.

“Capture that—! _Ugh_.” A smooth voice echoed down the hall.

Lance swung around, heart dropping to his feet.

The squad of Galra soldiers who’d captured him during a recon mission, tied him up and thrown him in a crate for the journey, were sprinting down the corridor for him.

A lean, long-haired Galra led the pack, dark cape snapping his ankles with every step he took. He’d been waiting to receive them when the other Galra hauled Lance off the prisoner pod. Lance was gratified that he was still wincing from the elbow he’d thrown into his ribs, letting Lance slip past him down the hall in the first place.

His yellow eyes flicked from Lance to the guy holding him, where they narrowed. He lifted chin, stretching the deep purple scar that ran from his eye to his jawline. “What are you doing with my prisoner, Keith?”

Lance tried to run, but the kid—Keith—held him fast.

“Let me go!” Lance stomped on his foot.

But they’d taken his armour, leaving him just his thermal leggings and undershirt, so his bare foot was nothing against Keith’s standard soldier boots.

Keith spun him against the wall, pinning a forearm under his chin. “Where do you plan to go? _Why do you look like me_?”

Lance would’ve answered—because though he definitely couldn’t escape the hold, Keith wasn’t using near enough pressure to cut off his breathing—but the Galra in the stupid cape cut him off.

“Keith,” he hissed, his tongue clipped between his pointed teeth. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

A long moment of silence stretched as Keith glared at the taller Galra.

When nothing happened save for Keith’s arm flexing against Lance’s throat, Lance whispered, “He asked you what you were doing with me.”

“I remember!” he said, even though he obviously hadn’t. He eased up before tossing Lance at the other Galra like he hadn’t been demanding answers from him moments before. “Apologies, Prince Lotor. I was assisting in apprehending the prisoner that somehow escaped your capable hands.”

Lotor’s nails dug into Lance’s shoulder. Lance gasped, slumping to escape his claws, sharpened to a razor point.

“An asset as always,” Lotor gritted out. “Despite your many inadequacies.”

Lance was basically on his knees now trying to shirk away from his nails, but Lotor didn’t seem to be paying any attention to him.

But Keith was.

“ _I_ don’t think you have any inadequacies,” Lance offered.

Keith’s jaw clenched, returning his attention to Lotor. “May I ask where this prisoner was captured?”

Lotor smugly flicked his hair over his shoulder. “You may not!”

“I’m from Earth,” Lance said desperately. “Have you ever been there? Have you ever met a human before?”

Lotor released Lance’s shoulder to smack his head against the wall.

When Lance’s ears stopped ringing, he heard Lotor sneering at Keith, “…skin, the hair, the eyes. Are your perception skills as poor as your combat skills? There are no similarities.”

Lotor shook Lance’s arm, and by extension his whole body, as if to drive his point home.

“Uh yeah, because I’m Cuban and he’s obviously, like, Korean or something,” Lance said as his teeth rattled.

Because shutting up? Was not Lance’s strong suit.

Especially when he had so many questions.

Who was this Keith guy? Had the Galra been to Earth? If they had, why hadn’t they invaded? If they hadn’t, how had a human ended up in deep enough space to happen across a Galra and… fall in love with one? How would that even work?

Keith narrowed his eyes at Lance. “I thought you said you were human.”

“See?” said Lotor. “He can’t even keep his own deceits straight.”

“It’s not a deceit—”

Lotor dragged him to his feet. He shoved him against the wall with one hand, and lifted a white eyebrow at Keith. “You think you’re like him?”

Keith pulled his shoulders back, face going carefully blank. “No.”

“No what?”

“No, _sir_ ,” he said, sharp canines glinting past his curled lips.

Lotor tilted his head, glossy hair sliding over his shoulder. He tutted. “See, now I think _you’re_ lying. Arm yourself. Now,” he added when Keith didn’t immediately obey.

Keith slipped a sword free from the sheath at his hip and took up a fighting stance.

Lotor stepped back, leaving Lance free against the wall, blocked in at all sides by Galra. “Stab the prisoner.”

“ _Ay_ , no!” Lance yelped, scrambling to cover important appendages.

“Cut him open and see how alike you are,” Lotor goaded. “Go on, if you doubt me.” He lifted a curved dagger from beneath his cape and grinned, snake-like, at Keith. “I can help you compare.”

Keith shifted his stance towards Lotor.

The guards backing up the prince drew their weapons in his defense.

“No, no!” Lance shouted. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s cool. Nobody needs to stab anybody!” He spread his hands at Keith. “You’re Galra, okay? You’re definitely Galra. I’ve never seen anyone so… purple. And furry. And _terrifying_. You’re super Galra.”

Keith met his eye, though Lance couldn’t begin to guess what he hoped to see there.

He _was_ part-human. He had to be. So he was the only person on this ship with any chance of wanting to help Lance. And that was a long-shot to begin with, but Lance wasn’t going to lose out on that tiny sliver of hope by letting Keith get stabbed upon their first meeting.

Also, if Lance didn’t shut his mouth, this Lotor guy was _definitely_ going to slice Lance open.

“You see?” Lotor scoffed. “How he begs for his life? Bows to another’s convictions.” He looked his nose down at Keith. “Hm, now I _do_ see the similarities.”

Keith’s brows lowered like storm clouds but he didn’t argue. Probably smart.

“I understand. _Sir_ ,” he spat the word like acid.

Lotor smirked, twirling his dagger through his fingers. “I still think you would benefit from seeing for yourself.”

Before Lance could show Lotor some _real_ begging for his life, another presence appeared at the end of the hall.

“Lotor,” snapped the newcomer.

Every Galra snapped to attention, postures razor straight.

The slim form who’d spoken skimmed toward them, face shadowed by a heavy hood. The mood in the corridor shifted from the casual rumblings of an upcoming fight to the swollen, crackling air before a lightning strike. 

Lance was guessing a druid. He didn’t appreciate her sudden appearance any more than the blade flashing in Lotor’s hand.

Still, she provided a distraction. Nobody had a hand on him. Nobody was watching him.

He slid along the wall, just the tiniest amount to see if anybody would stop him. They didn’t.

“You cannot be trusted with a task as simple as escorting a prisoner to their cell?” the druid rasped. Only her twisted mouth was visible beneath her hood.

Lotor drew himself even taller. “Of course I can, Haggar.”

“Then what is this?” She gestured at the armed gathering. She wasn’t loud but she was brittle. Like glass shards.

Lance sidled a little closer to Keith, two feet of space between him and the wall. If Lance was very, _very_ lucky—

Keith struck an arm out to block him.

“And what is _he_ doing here?” Haggar said, white hot heat radiating with each word.

Keith turned his dark stare from Lance to Haggar, gaze lowered in deference. “Offering my assistance, Haggar.”

Her purple fist curled in her sleeve. “You do not have the clearance to even _see_ this prisoner.”

Lotor puffed out his chest. “Just like I was saying—”

“Quiet,” Haggar said dangerously.

“I understand,” Keith said after a moment of heated silence between Lotor and Haggar. “It won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t.” She flicked a hand at two silent guards.  “Take the prisoner.”

They rumbled out of their stillness and bore down on Lance.

“Wait, no. Shit!”

But he had nowhere to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: this was written before S3, so I just read the wiki on Lotor from past versions, and his character is kind of based on that and kind of just what I need him to be in the narrative. So his characterization is a little different.  
> I'll probably get the second chap up in a few days, and then update once a week, maybe twice?  
> If you have any questions or concerns, hmu in the comments or on my tumblr, [katranga](http://katranga.tumblr.com).  
> Let me know what you think so far!  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm blown away by the feedback so far, thank you so much! Every kudos and comment sustains me :)

So, it turned out that Galra really didn’t like prisoners trying to escape their cell, because after three attempts at dodging past them whenever the door opened, Lance was left with a black eye and permanent cuffs—some sort of laser around his wrists and ankles. They didn’t hurt, or feel like much of anything, except when he tried to stand or get within a foot of the door. Then some invisible force prevented him from moving any further.

Which was super annoying. And, like, demoralizing, but he was focusing on annoying, because irritation kept him hot and awake, instead of sinking into a quick depression with the certainty that he was never getting out of this room.

There were no windows, obviously, not even peep hole in the door. It was solid… whatever hard metallic material that made up the rest of the cell as well. A toilet popped out of the wall when he hit a button, and slipped back in when he hit it again, so he had four blank walls to stare at for hours on end.

So he had some regrets.

On the upside, he had enough manoeuverability to feed himself.

On the downside, the food they served to prisoners was worse than the goop in the castle.

The closest Earth food he could compare it to was a protein bar, but it looked and probably tasted more like one of the oatmeal scrub bars at specialty soap stores. Lance tried not to think about what it was made of. He was just glad he wasn’t getting drugged.

He assumed. He’d probably be a lot more tired if they were drugging him, right? Or dizzy, or something? But he felt fine, as long as he didn’t think too hard about where he was or what the Galra planned to do to him.

Lance had been served four of those bars, so maybe a day and a morning had passed? Or two days, because twice daily meals seemed more likely. Maybe even four days, depending on how many nutrients were packed into the brick, and/or how little they cared about his well-being.

He had no way to tell.

He’d have to wait until his friends rescued him to know for sure.

That might take a while.

He was curled up in the corner, thinking about his team, probably a gazillion lightyears away, when his door slid open.

And wouldn’t that be the perfect time for Hunk to show up? Or Pidge? Or Shiro?

But it wasn’t a friendly face to fill him with relief.

It was the not-a-human, Keith.

He slipped into the cell and, in one fluid swipe, had his sword pointed at Lance’s throat. “If you tell anyone I was here, you won’t live to regret it.”

Lance lifted his hands, wrists ringed in cuffs made of buzzing light. “Who would I tell?”

“The guards.” His ears twitched, checking for sound outside. Apparently he didn’t hear anything concerning, because he continued with, “Who are you?”

Lance frowned, kind of offended. He was a paladin of freaking Voltron. “Isn’t there a file on me?”

“I don’t have access to that information.”

“There aren’t, like, wanted posters?” he asked. “Or an inter-office memo? Water cooler gossip? Why am I not the talk of the town?”

Keith shook his head like he was dislodging water, getting more irritated by the second. “I didn’t understand half of that. They won’t tell me anything. Just tell me who you are. _Comprehensibly_.”

Lance eyed the sword leveled at him sceptically. So Keith wasn’t authorized to be in here and his Galra buddies wouldn’t even tell him they’d captured a member of Voltron. That was suspicious.

No wonder Keith had snuck in here, demanding answers.

But since he’d snuck in, against orders, he couldn’t kill Lance, right? Somebody would notice, and there would be questions. Keith probably couldn’t even rough him up too much.

Lance considered teasing him about that. But that would be pressing his luck, and he didn’t have much to spare.

Besides, just because Keith couldn’t injure him much _now_ didn’t mean he wouldn’t be allowed to fuck him up later, and he needed to focus on getting on this guy’s good side.

“This’ll be our little secret, I promise,” Lance said.

The sword remained at his throat.

“Hey, um? I don’t have any weapons? I can’t even stand up with these cuffs, so you don’t need to wave that in my face.”

“You can’t stand?” Keith lifted his chin. “Try.”

He dropped his sword to let Lance move.

With a sigh, Lance got up on his knees, and tried to continue to his feet. But the cuffs restrained him, like there were invisible chains holding him down. It might have something to do with magnets?

If he were Pidge or Hunk, he might’ve been able to figure it out and release himself. Maybe even hack that Galra hand scanner next to the door and sneak out.

But he wasn’t them, he was Lance. So he was stuck.

Of course, even if he could get out, what good would that do? He didn’t have a weapon, and there was no way he was getting past his guards without one.

If he could steal Keith’s, though… That might work. He could at least do _something_ with Keith in his cell. He was better than absolutely nothing, which was what he had moments ago.

Keith returned his sword to his sheath, satisfied that Lance wasn’t a threat.

Lance smoothed down his shirt, the same one he’d had on under his paladin armour, along with his leggings. He felt underdressed compared to Keith, decked out in the Garla’s standard dark spacesuit.

Lance picked up the conversation to distract Keith while he worked out a plan. “So you’re Keith, right? I’m Lance. What—”

“You will speak when spoken to,” Keith cut him off, dead serious but without any heat.

Lance smirked, because he couldn’t take anything seriously. “That’s gonna be a problem for me.”

“Why? Is there something wrong with your mouth?”

“Some would say so.”

Keith grabbed his chin, calloused fingers steady and sure against his face. His grip was tight but not painful, which had to be deliberate; he’d left bruises on Lance’s arms from their first meeting.

He tugged Lance’s head this way and that—investigating his ears, dragging blunt nails through his hair, poking at his cheek—just getting way closer than a stranger had any right to be, basically.

But it was better than torturing him, so Lance didn’t protest.

He watched Keith’s eyes throughout his examination. Wide, dark, endlessly inquisitive. Filled with the narrow, blinding focus that all Galra seemed to have. But there was something else. Something raw and human.

“Open your mouth,” Keith said.

“No, no, I was kidding—”

“I’m not.”

Lance hesitantly opened his mouth, mentally apologizing to his dentist on Earth for accusing him of terrible bedside manner. He had nothing on Keith.

Keith peered around in there like an owl. Was he looking for fangs?

“Uh, sorry, I—”

Keith cut him off halfway through apologizing for not brushing his teeth in days. “What did I say about speaking?”

“And what did I say about that being a problem?”

His fingers tightened on Lance’s jaw, and for a second he was sure Keith was going to crush his bones so he’d never speak again. But then he released him, and straightened.

“Forget it.” A scowl overtook his face as he turned for the door.

Lance strained forward. “Wait!”

If anybody on this ship was going to help him, it would be Keith. It was a long shot even then, but Keith was clearly intrigued by Lance and what they had in common.  

If Lance could build up his trust—and who knew how long that would take—and turn him against his Galra—again, a long shot—Keith just might be his way out of here. Or, worst comes to worst, he’d just wait until Keith slipped up somehow and trick him into letting him out.

Either way, he needed Keith.

Plus, Lance was dying of boredom sitting in a room alone. The solitude was giving him way too much time to think.

“You wanna know about me, right?” Lance said. “I can tell you all about humans.”

“I don’t care,” he said, obviously lying, because he slowly turned back to Lance. “What are your crimes?”

Lance snorted. “You think everyone you guys imprison has committed a crime?”

“Against the Galra Empire, yes.”

He rolled his eyes. “Then I guess my crime is being a paladin of Voltron.”

He reeled. “Voltron?”

“Yup.” He grinned charmingly. “I pilot the blue lion. She’s the best one.”

Keith was staring at him, that flicker of curiosity blazing in his eyes. “I didn’t know…”

“That we’re all so devilishly handsome?”

“What? No!” He scowled. “Obviously I was going to say that you looked like me. Are all of you human?”

“Yup,” Lance said. “You don’t have pictures of us or anything?”

They’d have pictures of Shiro at the very least, from when he was contained on another prison ship. Just like Lance. He wondered how long the Galra would wait before they started experimenting on him. Or forcing him to fight for their entertainment. Or some as-of-yet unconceived horror.

See? Too much thinking wasn’t good for Lance.

“I don’t have access to that information,” Keith repeated by rote. Then he continued, talking more to himself than to Lance, “So that’s why you’re being held away from the other prisoners. We want Voltron to come save you so we can capture the black lion. And in the meantime, you won’t be able to rouse the masses into a revolt.”

“Me?” Lance blinked innocently. “Stage a revolt? Never. I’m not one for words.”

Keith stared at him flatly. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“It’s supposed to be me persuading you to transfer me to the other prisoners. I’m so bored.”

“I don’t have the authority to do that, and I wouldn’t if I did,” he said. “And how is _boredom_ a top concern?”

He shrugged. “I’m a social butterfly, Keith. I’m meant to soar.”

His ears flicked back. “I need to go.”

Shit, he forgot to sow seeds of discord.

“Why didn’t they tell you Voltron’s human?” Lance rushed out as Keith laid his palm against the scanner. “They’re hiding things from you, Keith. Don’t you wanna know who you are?”

He slipped out of the room without looking back, leaving Lance alone again, as if he’d never been there in the first place.

 

Lance continued to eat those terrible nutrition bars. Maybe the Galra’s plan was to weigh him down until he physically couldn’t move, because each one seemed to stick in his stomach, dragging it down like rocks.

He’d had ten overall, six since Keith had visited. So that meant he’d either been locked up for ten days, or five, or like… three. That’s _if_ they were feeding him on a regular schedule.

He slept in fits and starts, woken by nightmares or the discomfort of the hard ground, so he couldn’t measure days that way, either.

He was just… floating through space.

The worst part was that he knew this was as good as it was going to get. Anything that would break the monotony would be immeasurably worse.

So he shouldn’t be staring at the door, willing it to open just so he’d have something new to focus on. Instead of the muffled shrieks he heard every once in a while. Well, he _might’ve_ been hearing shrieks. He might’ve just been hearing _things_ , because he swore he heard Pidge screaming for him once, but nobody ever came to free him.

Lance tried to keep his panic at bay. Hallucinations were to be expected in solitary confinement, he knew that from lessons at the Garrison. He just had to stay strong. Remember that none of it was real. His friends were fine, and they were coming for him.

Probably. Maybe. It was getting hard to convince himself.

Did the Galra know what solitude did to humans? Was this _supposed_ to be torture, or just their standard captivity?

Lance was sprawled across the floor, contemplating how absolutely useless he was without his bayard and his lion and the rest of Voltron, when his door slid open. The nutrition bar was still cement-heavy in his stomach, so it wasn’t food time again.

He scrambled to a sitting position, sure that silently begging for something to happen had pricked fate and a guard had arrived to drag him to a lab, or a battle arena, or an interrogation room.

But it was Keith.

“Oh boy!” Lance grinned. “I sure am glad to see you.”

His face crumpled with confusion. “Why?”

He lifted a finger. “I’m super bored.” He lifted a second finger. “And you’re not allowed to deck me.”

Keith mouthed the word “deck” to himself with a frown. “Do all humans use so much slang? What does deck mean in that context?”

The paladins’ mental link with the lions translated alien languages for them, but slang, idioms, and metaphors tended to slip through the cracks. Which Lance found out the hard way on Arus, when he tried to tell a joke that got wildly mangled.

But Lance was always ready with a definition.

“Punch, hit, injure in any meaningful way,” he said smugly.

Keith squeezed the hilt of his sword. “Why do you assume that?”

“Your superiors don’t want you talking to me,” he said. “But you snuck in just to visit me! I’m flattered.”

He rolled his eyes, reaching for the door. “A mistake, obviously.”

“Wait!” Lance exclaimed. “Keith, my man, how are we supposed to be friends if you threaten to leave every time I say something charming?”

Keith lifted a finger. “You’re not charming.” He lifted a second finger. “We’re not friends.”

Lance’s responding grin nearly split his dry lips. “Are you kidding me? We’ve already got inside jokes!”

“All jokes are inside. We’re on a space ship.”

“Your presence is a _gift_.”

 He folded his arms across his chest, looking for all the world like a disgruntled teenager. A furry, purple, disgruntled teenager. “Don’t mock me.”

“I am being absolutely, 100% serious,” Lance promised. “Thank you so much for visiting.”

“This isn’t a social call. Tell me about humans.”

Lance spread his arms. “What do you wanna know? Biology? History? Social dynamics?”

“Are you all this…?” Keith waved a hand at Lance.

“Attractive? I’m afraid not. I’m—”

“ _Loud_ ,” Keith cut in. “Are you all this loud and frivolous?”

“Um, ouch.”

“That didn’t hurt you.”

He pouted. “It hurt my feelings.”

Keith stared at him again, like he was desperately searching for something in Lance he couldn’t quite find. “There’s no way I’m one of you.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Lance said. “All humans are different. I know plenty of grouchy people.”

“Um, have I stabbed you yet? No? Then I’m not grouchy.”

Laughter bubbled out of Lance.

Keith only scowled harder. “I've never heard of humans before. What planet did you say you were from? Eark?”

“Close. Earth. It's not under Galra control.”

“Yet.”

“The Galra have no reason to be interested in us. We haven't even made first contact yet.”

Keith just _looked_ at him.

“I mean as a planet,” Lance said like it was obvious. “No world governments have announced contact with any little green men.”

But individuals had met aliens, even before Voltron, as proven by Keith’s existence. Were they abducted, like Shiro? Or did they go looking for aliens? Or did Galra go looking for humans?

“Have you always been here?” Lance asked.

“I've traveled across the universe.”

Helping Zarkon conquer planets and ruin lives. He almost asked Keith what his position on the matter was, but decided he didn’t really want to know.

Besides, he was just a kid, right? He didn't seem to have any responsibility on this ship. Maybe he was just, like, interning.

And maybe Lance was clinging too hard to his only hope for companionship.

“I mean have you always lived with the Galra?” Lance asked. “Were you raised by them?”

Was he fully sucked into their sick way of thinking?

“Of course,” Keith replied. “Where else would I have been?”

Lance shrugged. “Earth, I dunno. One of your parents must’ve been from there. But I guess you don’t know them, huh?”

He shook his head. “Soldiers don’t live in family units. We’re raised in batches until we reach puberty.”

Lance’s heart sunk. “And then they teach you to fight?”

“We grow up learning to fight. We’re assigned ranks and posts once we’ve reached maturity.”

He swallowed past a bitter taste in his throat. Soldiers from the crib to the tomb.

“Is that not how it works on Earth?” Keith asked.

“No, you grow up like kids, you have a real childhood, and people can choose to be soldiers, if they want.”

“Like you did?”

Lance pulled his shoulders back. “I’m a pilot.”

“You’re a paladin,” Keith shot back, like that was the end of the argument. “Not raised to be, I assume?”

Lance let out a bark of laughter. “No, it was a bit more spontaneous than that.”

Shiro fell out of the sky one night and Lance, Pidge and Hunk rescued him, stole a desert speeder and just zoomed away. Lance was driving, and the further away they got from the Garrison, the more he felt like he knew where he was going, even though he’d never been out that far into the desert. The stirring in his chest directed him right to Blue’s cave, and, well, the rest was history.

What he said was, “Me and some friends found Blue in a cave and it was love at first sight.”

“What?”

“Me and Blue. Instant bond. Connected for _life_. Then she took us to meet Allura and Coran—you know, the last of the Alteans your boss tried to destroy,” he jabbed.

Keith crossed his arms, spine straight. “The ones who’ve been hiding the black lion from Zarkon. I’m familiar.”

“Yeah, well it’s Shiro’s now so— _nyah_.” He stuck out his tongue.

He narrowed his eyes, but didn’t ask for clarification. Maybe childish taunts were universal. “That was your first encounter with your lion? You weren’t training on Earth before we caught your signal for the first time?”

“I was training to be a pilot.” He lifted his chin proudly. “I was top of my class.”

“I’m sure,” he said flatly. “That wasn’t very long ago at all. I’m sure Zarkon won’t have a problem regaining control of the black lion from amateurs.”

Lance shot him a winning smile. “He’s had a tough time so far!”

“But now we have you.” Keith crouched down, so they were at eye-level, though they were still on opposite sides of the six-foot room. His eyes crinkled smugly. “Perfect bait.”

Lance had his reservations about that, but he didn’t share them. Keith was the enemy, he kept reminding himself. Even though it was so easy to look past the pale, purple skin and the giant ears to his dark eyes and see a potential friend.

Lance leaned forward, switching the subject to something that was useful to him. “So, really, though. How did you never wonder why you were different?”

He bristled. “I'm not. I fight in the name of Galra. I’m loyal to Zarkon.”

“Yeah, sure, but—”

Keith stood. “I need to leave.”

Lance popped to his knees. “You're coming back, right?”

He considered him, kind of suspiciously, kind of curiously, but not meanly. Not like that Lotor guy, like he’d squish Lance beneath his boot in a heartbeat.

He nodded slowly. “In a few sleep cycles. I still have questions.”

Lance finger-gunned him. “I'll be waiting.”

Keith scowled as he left, but Lance knew what he was doing. He had an annoying charm. It had worked on his teammates.

He was pretty sure.

And if he hadn't actually won them over, then he was double screwed, because they wouldn’t be coming and Keith wouldn’t be helping.

He thumped his head against the wall.

Too much time to think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, I love me some good banter lol. Lemme know how you liked it!  
> I'm thinking an update on Wednesday, because I'm gonna be busy the next few days planning my sister's baby shower. See you then!


	3. Chapter 3

“Tell me about Voltron,” Keith said the next time he showed up.

“Keithy boy!” Lance crowed, sliding into a sitting position leaning against the wall. “How many sleep cycles has it been?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“No, these shitty lights are on all day, all night, all whenever. I have no way to keep track of time.”

Keith frowned at the three rows of LED lights embedded in the walls. Not bright, not dark. Just in between. Lance’s eyes would be all out of whack the next time he was exposed to a normal brightness. But maybe his headaches would tone down then.

“Four sleep cycles,” Keith finally said.

It had been eight nutrition bars since he last saw Keith.

Was knowing he'd been imprisoned for ten days better than wildly guessing? He hated having no sense of time, but knowing how long it was taking his friends to find him wasn't any more comforting.

“Now answer my question,” Keith said.

“It wasn't really a question.”

Keith's hand drifted to his sword hilt.

“Buddy—”

“I'm not your buddy.”

“Sir,” Lance said sarcastically.

Keith unleashed a certified Galra glare. “I'm starting to understand why it's taking so long for your team to rescue you.”

And that hit like a kick to the chest.

Because they weren't the Voltron that Allura and Coran wanted them to be. They'd never had a red paladin, so they’d never been able to form Voltron. They weren't the most powerful weapon in the universe, they were just a bunch of robotic cats with a missing piece.

And now they had two missing pieces.

But Red was the picky one, not Blue. Anyone could fill Lance’s spot.

Sure, his friends wouldn't abandon him forever, but his rescue might be put on the back burner while they saved the universe, like the search for Pidge's family.

And that was fine, really. Lance was just a trap, anyway. Him being bait was the only reason the Galra had captured him instead of killing him on sight.

Besides, if there was one thing the never-ending expanse of space had taught him, it was that time was relative. And there was an endless amount of it. So what was ten days, in the grand scheme of things? What was ten days when planning a rescue mission against the Galra, right?

That was nothing. Lance did _not_ need to jump to the worst outcome.

Right?

Lance tucked his arms behind his head, oozing faux self-confidence. “They're taking their time, planning the biggest, baddest rescue for their favourite paladin. Nothing but the best for me.”

“Right.” Keith nodded, seeing through him as easily as plastic wrap. “Since your crew only has three out of five pilots, they’ll have to be cautious.”

Lance’s shoulders fell a bit more. Talking about Voltron was somehow even more depressing than talking about Earth.

“How are your people on resources?” Keith asked conversationally. “You’re on that ancient Altean ship, right? It must in constant need of repairs.”

“I don’t think I should be sharing top secret information with the enemy.”

“Thought we were friends,” he said flatly. “ _Buddies_ , even.”

Lance plastered a smile on. The plan, he had to remember the plan. It was a shitty plan, but if he wanted any hope of escape, getting Keith on his side was it.

“Right, yes, the castle is in tiptop shape and has never once tried to kill me,” Lance lied.

Keith’s brow furrowed, and he took his comment the wrong way, which was fair, because it didn’t make any sense without context.

“If I had _tried_ to kill you, you’d be dead,” Keith said.

Lance stroked his chin. “This is going to be a fraught friendship, isn’t it?”

He bit back a sigh. “Are all humans so…”

“Funny?”

“Flippant.”

Lance rubbed his temples, trying to will his headache away. It was hard work navigating the land mines peppered through this conversation.

He stretched his legs across the floor, considering an answer to Keith’s question. He kept asking about humans, like he wanted Lance to describe them all. But it wasn’t that simple.

“Humans are way too varied to slap a single adjective on all of them. I mean, it’s the same for—” He stopped himself. “Well, I guess bloodthirsty works for the Galra, doesn’t it?”

Somehow Keith took offense to that. “Bloodthirsty implies we’re slaves to our urges. We’re not. We’re… driven.”

“You’re _driven_ to commit genocide,” Lance retorted.

“We’re helping primitive planets—”

Lance gave a huge eye roll. “Yeah, yeah. Seen it, heard it, read the post card. Doesn’t matter how you justify it. It’s evil.”

Okay, this wasn’t being friendly either, and it was probably too early in their relationship to be slamming Keith’s worldview, but… Lance was tired. And he was in a Galra prison ship. If he couldn’t shit talk Galra there, then where could he?

“So all humans are good?” Keith asked expectantly.

Lance listed his head to the side. Human history was a mixed bag for sure, but the people he personally knew—he’d say were all basically good. Even that jerk Iverson at the Garrison was, in essence, just trying to train…

Kids into soldiers. The thought brought him up short.

Sure, it was voluntary on Earth, but Lance was fifteen when he packed his bags and headed off to learn how to defend his planet. He’d felt old enough at the time, but looking back? He was just a kid. He was still a kid, wrapped up in a thousand-year power struggle.

A small smirk pulled Keith’s lips when Lance fell silent.

Lance cobbled together a response. “Alright, there’s about a million books and movies asking that exact same question. And half of them say that there’s good in all of us, and the true nature of humans is a relentless hope. And the other half say we don’t deserve redemption, and when we’re down to the wire, we’re only out for ourselves. So… I guess if you wanna plaster one adjective over all humans, I’d say we’re divided.”

“The Galra are not.”

It took Lance a second to recognize the pride in his voice.

“Um?” He jutted his chin out incredulously. “You should be, though. That’s the problem.”

“Why, so we can have infighting like humans? If you weren’t so busy arguing about whether you were good or not, maybe you’d have made it to space by now.”

“We’ve made it to _space_ ,” Lance said, unreasonably offended considering the subject matter. “And I’d rather be divided than have the unquestionable goal of conquering everyone in our path.”

Which, you know, was actually some humans’ goal, but that wasn’t the point.

But Keith, again, picked up on what he left unsaid. “What about the half of humans who believe you’re all self-serving? Don’t tell me they don’t fight tooth and nail for control of your planet.”

Lance sucked his teeth. “Okay yeah, colonization is a pretty big deal on Earth, but it’s _bad_ ,” he stressed. “Just because it happens, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be stopped. Just because humans do it doesn’t make what the Galra do okay.”

Keith pursed his lips considerinly. “If I threatened to cut you open again, would you still hold onto your convictions so strongly?”

This guy was unreal.

“If it’s between my death and a lie, I’ll always lie. I’m not dying over _pride_.”

“Hm.” Keith studied his face like he was digesting something. “Divided and duplicitous. Interesting.”

He reached for the door.

“Wait!” Lance wished his stomach didn’t plummet every time Keith started to leave.

Keith looked back at Lance—his outstretched hands and the distress colouring his face.

Lance settled back against the wall and folded his hands neatly, dignified, in his lap. “Will you come back?” he asked casually.

After a long moment of deliberation that had sweat breaking out on the back of Lance’s neck, Keith said, “Yeah. I want more answers. You keep distracting me.”

Lance winked. “I’m a distracting person.”

Keith rolled his eyes.

And then Lance was alone again.

 

Lance did a lot of push ups. Sit ups. Unfortunately he couldn’t manage squats with the cuffs, but he did his best to remember the yoga poses his sister tried to teach him what seemed like a lifetime ago.

Anything to pass the time, to keep him in some semblance of shape so he could fight his way out of there. Eventually.

He was in the middle of his workout routine, which got longer every day because there was nothing else to do, when Keith returned.

“Keith!” He transitioned out of a sit-up into a seated position. “I was starting to think you forgot about me.”

It had been another four days since he’d last seen Keith, or as close to that as he could guess based off Galra time-measuring techniques and the nutrition bricks tossed into his cell twice a day.

Though Galra days _had_ to be longer than Earth ones, because it felt like an eternity already. Lance might bug Keith a bit more about moving to a cell with the other prisoners, because he wasn’t sure how much more isolation he could take.

He was still hearing things. Screaming. Crying. Singing. He’d had a full conversation with Hunk through the wall before he seemed to walk away without helping Lance out. It took him a few hours of shouting for him to come back before he came to terms with the fact that Hunk had never been there in the first place.

Lance did not like solitary confinement.

“I was busy,” Keith mumbled absently, staring at Lance’s bare chest. He seemed almost startled; he was completely still save for his bobbing Adam’s apple.

Lance leaned back on his hands, watching Keith be mesmerized.

Well. He could work with this.

He slid onto his knees, legs parted, casually stretching his torso back in a pose he’d practiced a hundred times copying 90s boy band dance moves.

“I was thinking about you,” Lance said.

“No you weren’t.” His pupils were blown wide when he finally met Lance’s eye.

Lance grinned in what he hoped was a rakish manner. “How couldn’t I? Look at you.”

His light lavender cheeks blushed pure pink, totally at odds with his snapped order of, “Stop it.”

But he was leaning the tiniest bit forward, like he couldn’t quite help himself.

“Come on, I’ve been in here forever. I’m getting lonely. I miss… touch,” Lance finished quietly, because it wasn’t a lie at all. He was a tactile person. He missed snuggling up with Hunk on the couch. Catching Pidge in a hug. Making up handshakes with Coran. He’d kill for just a shoulder squeeze from Shiro right now. “Touch me?”

Keith’s fingers twitched. “No.”

Lance breathed a laugh. A challenge. “What? You scared?”

“I am _not_ —” He reached out, right hand landing on the hollow of Lance’s throat.

A needy shiver shook Lance, raising goosebumps across his flesh. The threat of strangulation had never felt so satisfying.

Keith’s flat palm was cool against Lance’s sweaty skin, still flushed from his workout. Keith watched with a quiet, rapt fascination as Lance slipped his left hand over his rough knuckles—the Galra weren’t big on moisturizer apparently—and tucked his fingers between his.

Lance guided Keith’s hand up his throat to cradle his jaw. Keith’s lips were parted just enough for a peek of his razor-sharp canines.

Keith brushed his thumb over his cheekbone. Lance exhaled heavily at the unexpectedly tender gesture.

“See?” Lance murmured. He turned his head to press a kiss to Keith's calloused palm. “Nothing to be scared of.”

Keith’s eyelids fluttered.

Lance wrapped his free hand around the hilt of Keith’s sword and yanked.

Pain exploded across the side of his face faster than he could blink. Keith spun him around, caught him in a chokehold, and leveled the tip of his sword at his ribs, right where he’d have to go through to strike his heart.

His chest heaved against Lance’s back. Lance pressed up into him. To get away from the sword, he told himself. But he couldn’t deny that the solid weight of Keith’s chest was unduly comforting.

Even if Keith could kill him. Even if Lance had been tricking Keith into touching him for a distraction, he still _wanted_ it.

A strangled sound escaped Keith’s throat. He shoved Lance away.

Lance swung around as the hand scanner beeped.

“Wait, Keith!”

But he was gone, fleeing like the hounds of hell were after him.

“Keith!”

 _Fuck_.

 

A week passed.

Keith didn’t come back.

Lance stopped counting his nutrition bars.

The next time a Galra appeared in his doorway, it wasn’t Keith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)))) Who's ready for a chapter in Keith's POV?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments and kudos so far, they really mean a lot to me!  
> Heads up, there's some battle arena fights in this chap, so here be violence.  
> Now, as promised, Keith POV!

Keith’s gaze was stuck on the ground for days, too mortified to look his superiors in the eye. They had no way to know what he’d done, but he was sure his foolishness was written plain across his face.

Or on his palm, where the burning imprint of Lance’s lips had yet to fade.

Stupid, so stupid, he berated himself every time he thought about it.

And he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

 _Nothing to be scared of_ , Lance had said, lips brushing his skin as he dug into Keith’s core fears. Touching him softer than he could ever remember being touched. Looking up at him so openly, almost innocent and—not helpless, but… _tempting_.

The scene blazed on the back of his eyelids every night as he tried to sleep. Lance on his knees, with wide eyes and the hint of a smirk. Begging to be touched, with no qualms about Keith doing the touching.

Not flinching, even when Keith reached out so suddenly, just to—to lay his hand on him. To mark the contrast between lavender and warm brown. To feel his sweaty skin, and his heart fluttering under his palm.

It felt just like his own.

Lance had made it quite clear he thought Keith was part human. He recognized something in Keith. A kinship.

But Lance had already admitted to being a liar. And when his friendship ploy didn’t work fast enough, he’d tried something new. A trap Keith walked into embarrassingly easily. Because something about Lance made his chest ache, made him pliable like putty in his hands.

So he let himself be fooled into believing—what? That Keith could trust him? That for a moment he didn’t have to be alone? That Lance _wanted_ as keenly as Keith?

Pathetic.

Keith was pathetic, and Lance was smarter than he gave him credit for. This was war, Lance was a prisoner, and he’d do anything to escape. Playing Keith like a puppet was fair game, but that didn’t mean Keith had to play.

He didn’t go back. He focused on dismissing the abject, undiluted humiliation that surfaced every time he remembered Lance grabbing his sword.

Keith’s nails dug into his palm, as if that would erase the softness that had once rested there. As if that would scrub his memory of Lance’s half-lidded eyes and parted lips.

He needed a distraction.

So when he heard word of a prisoner battle, he headed to the arena. He usually didn’t bother, because watching druid creations tear apart defenseless prisoners wasn’t as entertaining as everybody else seemed to think, but he was desperate to stop thinking about Lance.

Lance would probably hate these arena battles.

Keith swore under his breath. Who cared what Lance thought? He was never seeing him again. It had been foolish to visit him at all, let alone more than once.

He approached the arena, following a group of his fellow Galra, all of them at least a head taller than him. Even Lance was taller than him.

He shook his head and lifted it up higher, trying to fit in.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder.

He slipped away, sword halfway out of his sheath before he caught sight of Lotor smirking at him. “And where do you think you’re going, Keith?”

He said his name like a designation. Cadet. Runt. Weakling. The lowest of the low.

“The battle arena, Prince Lotor,” he replied evenly.

Maybe he shouldn’t antagonize him by reminding him that he was _just_ the prince. Not the ruler of the entire universe like his father. But Keith had been doing lots of things he shouldn’t lately.

“No you’re not,” Lotor said.

He pulled his shoulders back. “Why shouldn’t I? I have no pressing duties.”

“Find one,” Lotor said. “Your clearance for these fights has been revoked.”

A chorus of snickers sounded from other soldiers filtering past them into the arena. Keith fought to keep his embarrassed flush at bay.

Lotor tucked his hands behind his back. “So you won’t be seeing your little friend today.”

For lack of anything better to do, Keith glared in response. Because who was Lotor talking about? Did he think Keith was meeting somebody in the arena?

He settled on saying, “You and I both know I don’t have any friends.”

Which sounded a lot pithier in his head.

Lotor loomed closer, an annoyingly common tactic which forced Keith to either retreat or crane his neck up to meet his eye.

Keith stubbornly stayed put, staring up at Lotor.

“Whatever you’re planning on calling it.” Keith nearly choked on the scent of Lotor’s breath; sharp and tangy like blood. “A pet?”

He still had no idea what he was talking about. “I’m sure I’m supposed to be offended, but I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

His smirk somehow grew even larger. “You’ve been asking an awful lot of questions about that human.”

Lance. Lotor was talking about Lance, and Keith’s interest in him.

But Lotor couldn’t know that Keith had snuck in to see him. He couldn’t know that Keith had cradled Lance’s cheek with careful fingers. That Lance almost bested Keith with a _kiss_.

Some of his shame must’ve bled onto his face, because Lotor backed up to have extra space to puff his chest out and gloat.

“You’ve been sticking your nose in business Haggar has explicitly forbade you from.” His eyes glinted with a dark promise. “Do you know what she’d do to you for that?”

Little, since Haggar had returned to Zarkon’s main ship a few sleep cycles ago. But Lotor would gladly punish him in her stead.

If she bothered to read his correspondence to her.

Still, Lotor would take matters into his own hands if Keith crossed a line and no one of importance was around to stop him.

“So you’ve forbid me from the battle arena?” Keith said carefully.

“No, those are Haggar’s rules.” He shook out his mane of hair. “If it were up to me, I’d stick you right beside me so I could watch your face as your little friend got ripped to shreds.”

Keith’s pulse tripped.

“La—” He bit his tongue. He wasn’t supposed to know Lance’s name. He wasn't supposed to have any opinions or feelings on Lance being an arena participant today.

He schooled his features into disinterested disdain. “I hope you’ll be able to enjoy the entertainment without me.”

Lotor smiled grimly, teeth sharp, pointed nose nearly brushing Keith’s as he ducked into his personal space. “Watch yourself, Keith.”

And then, with one snap of his cape, he was gone.

And Keith was left clenching his jaw in the flow of the crowd chatting excitedly about the paladin’s upcoming fight.

“…looks like Voltron’s abandoned him, so we’ve got him in the ring,” a guy with bushy eyebrows was saying.

His friend barked a laugh. “Finally. Even if Voltron still wants him, it’s not like they’ll know he’s dead when they come looking.”

Keith took a breath. He shouldn't care. He didn't care.

He spun on his heel and stalked off.

The battle arena wouldn’t be a distraction from Lance anymore, but he was more determined than ever to see it.

As the smallest Galra on this ship, and any other ship he’d been on, Keith had always been the first to call when there was a problem in the vents. He just boosted himself up and wriggled around until he disposed of the giant dead rat stinking up the place, or tightened a loose bolt, or fixed whatever the problem was.

So he knew where all the entrances were, where they led, and what rooms they peeked into.

He’d never needed that knowledge beyond officially-sanctioned vent clearings, but there was a first time for everything. And his palm still burned.

He ducked into an empty hall and unscrewed a vent that would get him to the battle arena. He didn’t rush; they’d definitely save the blue paladin for last. Still, he worked quickly, before anyone could spot him skulking around disobeying orders. Haggar would be furious if she found out, and Lotor would carry out his punishment, so it’d be nothing short of debilitating.

Keith’s eyes turned yellow as soon as he got far enough into the vent. It was instinctual, to see better in the dark—or when he fought. He looked a bit more like everybody else then.

And a bit less like Lance.

Why didn't Haggar want Keith so much as looking at him? He’d seen him already—the damage was done. He knew they had similar eye colouring, and his body type was way closer to Lance’s than any Galra he’d ever met. But Lotor was right; their similarities weren’t extensive.

And every interaction with Lance convinced him more that Keith couldn’t _possibly_ be part human.

So what was Haggar’s deal?

At least Lance was upfront with his lying. At least Keith knew exactly what Lance wanted from him.

Lance wanted out. Keith couldn’t facilitate that, even if he wanted to risk his life over some random, annoying prisoner.

Lotor wanted Keith miserable. He’d had it out for him ever since Keith beat him in a training fight. _Once_. Out of dozens.

Haggar loathed the idea of Keith interacting with Lance because…?

 _They’re keeping things from you_ , Lance’s words came back to him. He’d dismissed it as another ploy, but what other explanation was there?

The question hovered in his mind until he reached the vent cover situated high above the arena crowds, near the ceiling of the huge space.

Keith peered through the slats at the prisoner below. They were small from Keith’s vantage point, but he could tell it wasn’t Lance. He was pretty sure they were Balmeran. And they were downed in seconds by one of the beasts prowling around the boulders planted throughout the ring.

Lance might not make it out of there alive, but as a paladin of Voltron he’d damn well better put up a fight. An experienced fight, not a scrappy last-chance skirmish like the next prisoner. They didn’t last more than a minute.

Keith watched impatiently as prisoner after prisoner tried to beat the wolfish druid creations prowling the ring. They were strong and merciless and nothing Keith hadn’t seen before.

The current prisoner, some sort of muscley tree alien, shook off the wolf’s fangs and struck a killer hit to its head with a bat. But then a second wolf shot acid out of its mouth, reducing the prisoner to a screaming pile of wood in seconds.

A replacement wolf was brought out for the next round, but there was a pause before the next prisoner was thrown into the ring.

Anticipation rose, thick in the air. It left a sour taste in Keith’s mouth.

The announcer’s voice boomed through the stadium, boasting about how weak and pathetic Voltron was, proven by the fact they’d caught one of their paladins.

“And it looks like they’re not risking their sorry hides over this one,” he continued. “So let him entertain us!”

The crowd went wild.              

And maybe this was why Keith had been banned from being anywhere near Lance. Because Keith didn’t catch the frothing excitement. He didn’t feel any of the bloodthirst Lance accused all Galra of having.

There was only a heaviness in his gut as Lotor dragged Lance into the arena by his shirt collar. The cuffs were still on Lance, but they’d been adjusted so he was on his own two feet, probably for the first time since he’d been captured.

Lance sneered at Lotor and must’ve spouted something rude because Lotor booted him in the ass before stalking out.

Why couldn’t that boy keep his mouth _shut_?

Alone in the ring, Lance blinked feverishly against the harsh lights. The boulders were embedded with cameras that streamed onto the holo-screens hanging above, so Keith could see with perfect clarity Lance’s hands shaking around his blaster rifle.

Keith pressed his face closer to the grate, as if getting a better view of Lance’s terrified face would make him _move_.

“Get your gun up,” Keith gritted out.

Lance didn’t look like a paladin of Voltron. He looked like a lost boy in desperate need of a nap.

But then he hefted the blaster onto his shoulder, jaw set. He morphed into a soldier ready to defend himself as he moved, swiftly taking stock of his surroundings.

Lance was pondering one boulder—probably wanting to climb it for a better vantage point—when a creature leapt out from behind a smaller rock.

“Look out!” Keith cried, echoing down the vent. Of course he was drowned out by distance and the roar of the crowd, insatiable for the paladin’s fall.

Lance spun at the last moment and shot the wolf out of the air. It rolled to a stop against the boulder Lance had been considering, and he jumped on it to grab a handhold he hadn’t been able to reach without its corpse as a step.

He scrambled to the top, keeping low. He took out another creature in a second.

That was two already. There were only two more left.

Keith slowly released the death grip he had on the grate. Lance might make it through this.

Which shouldn’t matter to Keith. Who was Lance except a prisoner who wanted to manipulate him? A paladin who threatened the end of the Galra’s reign over the universe?

Yeah, Keith shouldn’t care at all.

That didn’t stop his breath from catching when Lance barely managed to duck away from a spray of acid.

Lance shot at a creature on the opposite side of the boulder from Keith. On the holo-screen, he saw the beam burn a hole into the packed dirt.

Lance’s second try was a head shot. Kill shot.

Keith nodded. Good. Good. One wolf left. This was farther than he expected Lance to get, so he could get a little further, right? He could survive.

But then Lance shot at the wolf prowling at the base of his rock. Well, he _tried_. He pulled the trigger. A few times. Then he smacked the gun against his palm and tried again. Nothing.

Keith’s stomach dropped as he remembered that guns were only loaded with enough ammo for the number of enemies in the ring. Lance had started four shots. Now he had none.

Why the fuck had he picked a gun?

The wolf sprayed acid at Lance. He threw himself backwards to avoid it and ended up falling off the other side.

The holo-screen showed him hitting the ground at a roll—because he was a professional who knew how to take a fall without hurting himself. Who could easily adjust to worsening conditions.

“C’mon, Lance,” Keith muttered, gripping the slats tighter than ever.

Lance jumped to his feet, leveling his gun on instinct as he looked around.

Keith’s heart pounded in his throat.

Lance and the wolf slowly circled the rock, until Lance was back in Keith’s field of vision. And the wolf’s.

The wolf charged.

Lance charged right back, head-on.

It leapt for him. Lance dove, sliding under it as it soared over him.

Before it could whip its bulky body around to face him, Lance launched himself onto its back.

He shoved his thumb in its eye socket, first one, then the other. Its screech ripped through the air louder than the roaring crowd.

Then Lance slammed the butt of his blaster against its skull. Again and again. Teeth gritted, thighs clamped around its throat so it couldn’t buck him off.

It slumped to the ground, but Lance kept hitting it, red blood splattered across his shirt, his hands, his face.

Until the victory sirens blared, the first of the night.

He rolled off the wolf, spitting its blood onto the dirt.

Lotor had wanted Keith to cut Lance open to prove how different they were. Accused Lance of being weak for folding on his convictions, begging for his life.

But this boy wasn’t weak.

He was just like Keith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do spaceships have vents?? They do now.  
> Anyway, you may have noticed that we now have a chapter count! It'll be 15 chapters, and I'm sitting at around 40k words right now, though I'm still fiddling with the ending. Once I have one set in stone, I'll probs post twice weekly, but until then I'm rationing out chapters lol.  
> Action scenes are the worst to write, so please lemme know if it was like... good lmao. Also lemme know what you thought of Keith's thoughts!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the feedback!! I'm glad everybody liked the dive into Keith's head. There will be a few more chapters in his POV later, but for now we're back to Lance!

Keith’s next visit was shortly after Lance’s battle. He was refusing to call it his _first_ battle because that implied there would be more, and he didn’t want to think about that.

Lance had lost track of how long it had been since he’d last seen Keith. He was hearing pretty distinct voices now, though. So that was… concerning. Like, he was 80% sure it was all in his head. But what if his friends _were_ there? And they’d been captured, too? And nobody was coming to save him and they were all suffering, together but alone?

Except these walls had to be soundproof, because he never heard the guards’ footsteps, and he knew that _prolonged isolation caused hallucinations._ And paranoia. And depression. Obviously. Who wouldn’t get depressed when all signs pointed to you dying on a Galra ship?

Lance dropped his head between his knees, inhaling deeply.

But, Keith. Now Keith was here. That was something.

So.

He thumped his head against the wall.

Everything was peachy, really.

Keith looked down at him, chewing his lip.

Lance almost reached out for— _anything_ , but then he remembered last time, and why Keith had been gone so long. He figured Keith wouldn’t trust him to so much as hold his hand.

The idea of apologizing flitted through his mind, but Keith was already back. He’d gotten over it. And Lance wasn’t sorry anyway.

Lance managed a grin for him. A little brittle, since he’d just had to kill a living thing with his bare hands, but he tried to smooth it over with his words. He really was glad Keith was there.

“Tell me you were watching. Pretty impressive, huh?”

He could still taste rusty blood on his tongue. The guards had hosed him off, given him a fresh set of clothes—an ugly grey shift and leggings that were somehow too tight and too loose at the same time—and sent him back to his cell without so much as a congratulations. Not that he’d expected it. Those wolf things had to be in a lot lower supply than prisoners, and Lance had killed four of his opponents.

“Guns only have enough charges for the amount of enemies in the ring,” Keith said.

“Yeah! Caught onto that,” Lance said, crossing his arms. “Figured that Lotor insisting I take a gun would be a problem, but he didn’t really give me a choice. Luckily, I’m a great shot.”

“You’re an _okay_ shot,” he corrected, ears twitching. “As evidenced by the fact that you almost died.”

Lance shot out of his slump against the wall. “I didn’t almost die because I missed a shot. I almost died because you and your buddies wanted me dead!”

“I don’t have anything to do with the arena,” he said, way too quick.

Lance glared up at him. “You _watched_.”

“And I wasn’t even supposed to do that.” Keith squeezed the hilt of his sword, brows lowered like storm clouds.

What the hell did Keith have to be mad at? It wasn’t like Lance’s friends had forced Keith into a fight for his life.

“Did you tell Lotor about me?” Keith asked.

“What? Get outta here!” Lance flung a hand at the door. He got up on his knees, looking as intimidating as possible while glued to the floor. “You can’t come in here after leaving me alone for a week, shit talk my marksmanship, and then accuse me of tattling on you. Fuck off!”

Keith’s jaw clenched, hard as stone.

Then he reached for the hand scanner.

Lance’s stomach dropped. “Wait!”

Keith paused.

Lance sunk back on his haunches, the fight leaking out of him like a popped balloon. “You know I want you to stay. You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

Keith slowly turned to face him. “Don’t ever assume I know what’s running through that head of yours.”

That almost made Lance smile. “Aw, am I an enigma to you, Keith?”

“See? What—” He splayed his hands. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

He shrugged widely. “I guess you’ll just have to keep visiting to figure me out.”

Keith considered him. He was always doing that. Just _looking_ at him.

 Was he searching for similarities or differences? Did he want to be like Lance or not? Maybe he was trying to figure that out, too.

“I guess,” Keith finally agreed. He crouched down to meet Lance’s eye, still close enough to the door that Lance couldn’t touch him if he tried. Lance edged forward anyway. “But Lotor might end up killing me if you told him about me. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Lance grumbled.

It was a knee-jerk response—of course he didn’t want Keith _dead_ —but Keith looked a little surprised. And more than a little pleased.

“I don’t want you dead, either,” Keith said—which, okay, Lance understood Keith’s shock, because that was definitely new information for Lance, too.

This was good. This was very good. Keith was developing sympathy for him. Lance could use this.

Grinning, he leaned forward on his hands. “Were you cheering for me?”

Keith stood, taking up his usual spot against the wall. Even if he didn’t want Lance dead, he still didn’t trust him enough to let him get anywhere close. Shit.

 “I was wishing you’d shut up when Lotor kicked you in the ass,” he said flatly. “What did you say to him?”

“I said he looked like a villain from a bad anime and then told him to go fuck himself.”

Keith blinked.

“Fuck means—”

“The context makes it clear,” he cut in. He continued, sounding like confused grandmother, “What is an anime?”

Lance huffed a laugh.

“A cartoon. TV show. Entertainment,” he tried again, trying to find an explanation that would work for someone who’d never been to Earth. “Something we watch on our uh… holo-screens. It’s not important.”

“No, I suppose it’s not.” Which was kind of rude, because Keith was the one who asked about anime, but whatever. “Did he ask about me?”

Lance raised his brows. “Why, you sweet on him?”

Keith pulled the most disgusted face, ears flattening against his skull.

“ _No_. Lotor is a—” His lips twisted around some Galra word that didn’t get translated.

“What’s that?”

He paused, features still contorted in disgust while he took a moment to decide on a definition. “Someone who, if they were on fire, you wouldn’t even piss on to extinguish, because they’re more useful as a heat source than as a person.”

A grin bloomed across Lance’s face. “What a delightful language.”

Keith scoffed, shaking his bangs into his eyes “So. Did you say anything else to that _vrendit fara_?”

“Yeah, he was asking about you…” He could barely cast him mind back that far. What did he remember when Lotor dragged him out of his cell? The heart-pounding panic. The dry throat. The aching headache, not at all helped by the, “Oh, right. I was talking to myself. Or—these walls are soundproof, right?”

“Yes,” Keith said haltingly. “Unless human hearing is better than Galra’s.”

So that meant his friends weren’t here. That was good. Not for his mental state, but in the grand scheme of things. They were still safe. They might be coming for him.

Lance shook his head. “Okay, so yeah I guess I was talking to myself, which, all things considered, worked out pretty well. Pissed him off, at least.”

Keith tilted his head. “So you were talking to yourself just to piss him off?”

“No, like, I’ve been hallucinating from being cooped up this long.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Turns out when you lock humans up with no stimulus, we just make shit up. It’s um… not fun.”

He frowned at him. “You said you were just bored.”

“I mean, that’s also a problem.”

Keith was still frowning, looking him over like he wanted to do another weird check up on him. Lance wouldn’t be opposed, but he could capitalize on this concern in exchange for something better.

He sat up straighter. “Hey, you should do something for me.”

Keith scowled. So subtly different than a troubled frown, but Lance was starting to learn the difference.

“For the hundredth time,” Keith said, “I can’t release you. I don’t have the clearance.”

“Would you if you could?”

“Irrelevant.” He lifted his chin. “So what do you want?”

Oh shit, he was actually going along with it.

“I… didn’t think I’d get this far,” Lance admitted.

His shook his head. “What kind of bargaining technique is that?”

He wanted _something_. But he was pretty sure a hug would be pushing it. So what else…?

Lance slapped the ground, leaning forward desperately. “Can you transfer me?”

Lotor hadn’t even let him wait with the other prisoners before the battle. Lance was kept separate, like he was too dangerous to touch.

Keith shook his head. Was that real regret etching his face, or just Lance projecting?

“I was thinking more along the lines of extra food, or…” He trailed off with a shrug.

But Lance didn’t want extra food. He wanted, “A blanket.”

“A… blanket?”

“Yeah. I use my shirt as a pillow when I’m trying to sleep, but then my chest gets all cold.” He pouted. “It’s very sad.”

Keith stared at him, incredulous instead of curious for once. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll get you a blanket.”

Lance held out his hand. He’d squeeze some physical contact out of this encounter whether Keith liked it or not. “Pinky promise?”

“What?”

He raised his pinky. “It’s an unbreakable vow.”

Keith looked down at his own pinky in confusion. “Is it a curse?”

“No, it just means you really mean it and you have to go through with it.”

“Because…?”

“Because you pinky promised!”

Keith pushed off the wall and curled his pinky around Lance’s. Lance locked it in place, and then immediately regretted the pinky promise angle. He should’ve gone for a handshake. That would’ve basically been holding hands. Or shit, maybe he could’ve convinced Keith that a hug was the customary way to seal the deal on Earth.

“Is that it?” Keith said when Lance just stared at their hands.

“Now you have to promise,” Lance said.

“Uh, I pinky promise to bring you a blanket.”

“Thank you!”

Keith had the audacity to wipe his hand on his pants after he let go. “Is that a common Earth custom?”

“Oh yeah, totally. Mostly for kids,” he added. “But I have a lot of siblings.”

“Right, your family unit,” Keith said absently. He tugged at his ear. “Do you think your team will inform them of your capture?”

Lance sighed, shoulders slumping. “We have no way to contact Earth. None of our families know we’re out here. I’m sure the Garrison’s told them we’re all dead already.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. _Oh_ ,” Lance said, upbeat mood dissolving.

At least his family would be right about his fate soon. Would his mom be able to feel it, when some robeast finally killed him? Would she _know_? Or would she keep desperately holding out hope that he’d get back to her some day?

Keith crouched again, meeting Lance’s eye line. “Hey, do you want tips for your next battle?”

“What, like don’t pick the gun?” he asked dully. He was still gonna pick it.

“I can tell you what to expect,” Keith said intently. “The arena will either be empty, have those boulders, stacks of crates, or walls. The crates won’t support your weight, so don’t try climbing them, or else you’ll end up making a lot of noise _and_ get yourself stabbed through. Are you listening?”

“Yeah, just…” He looked at him softly. “You really were cheering for me, weren’t you?”

Keith blushed—he full-on _blushed_. “Can you just listen to me, please?” he said all snippy. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

 “I’m listening,” he assured him. He leaned back, crossing his legs in front of him. “Go for it, buddy.”

He nodded, continuing with the calm precision of a soldier. “The walls are spiked on top and retract and extend out of the floor randomly. There’s a _click_ right before they move, so pay attention.”

 

Keith kept his promise. The next time he showed up—three sleep cycles later, Lance had started counting again—Keith tossed him a small foil square.

“It folds up real small so you can hide it when the guards come or when they do that shower thing.”

‘That shower thing’ being ice cold water shooting from the ceiling with needle-like pressure for twenty seconds before getting sucked into hidden drains in the floor. Then getting hit with air, that was somehow just as hard, to dry him off. The first time it happened, Lance thought he was getting flushed down a toilet.

He shook the blanket out to its full size, easily the length of him. A space blanket. Like the astronauts used. He’d begged his mom for one just like it for his eleventh birthday.

Lance laughed under his breath. “Thanks, this is perfect.”

Keith nodded, satisfied, as he leaned against the wall. “Good. Because Lotor almost caught me sneaking it from the supply closet. He won't leave me alone lately.”

“Ugh. That guy.” Lance attempted to repeat the thing Keith had called him last time. “ _Vrendit fara_.”

“No, _vrendit fara_ ,” Keith corrected.

Lance shook his head. “I’m not hearing a difference. So how’d you shake him off to get in here?”

“He’s training—which just means beating up anybody else in the room.” He rolled his eyes. “He’ll be hours.”

Lance tucked the blanket around his shoulders.  "I meant to ask—is he really a prince? Like, is he Zarkon's son?"

“He sure thinks so. Anyone with half a brain can tell he resents his father for hoarding his power. He got stationed out here just so Zarkon wouldn’t have to deal with him.”

Lance lifted a brow. “Does he really expect a dictator to share control?”

“I don’t know. People expect a lot from Zarkon that he’s never gonna do. Like show up here.” He crossed his arms, adding at a mutter, “Or _exist_.”

Which was not a comment he was expecting from this conversation.

“Um?” Lance propped his chin on his hands. “I’m gonna need more on that last bit.”

Keith took a long moment to look him over more sceptically than usual. “Have you met Zarkon?"

“Haven't had the pleasure.”

“Neither have I,” he said slowly. “Neither have most of the people I've spoken to.”

“Space is a big place.”

Keith glanced at the door before ducking his head closer, though they were still across the room from each other. He lowered his voice to a hush. “And what if that's the excuse they’re using to keep the idea of Zarkon alive?”

Lance covered his growing grin with his hand. He wasn’t sure why he was so amused. Something about Keith getting so hyped about a theory that could topple the Galra’s rule over the universe.

This was promising.

“Do you think he's dead?” Lance asked. He wasn’t sure if he believed Keith, but he sure as hell wanted to find out how loyal he was to Zarkon.

“Well, do you really think he's been alive for ten deca quintents?”

He went ahead and assumed that was the Galra’s version of ten thousand years.

Lance shrugged. “So how do you think he’s done it?”

Keith smiled. Maybe. Blink and you miss it, and Lance wasn’t sure he hadn’t blinked.

Keith talked. And talked. He was _really_ into this. It occurred to Lance that he was probably the first person Keith had ever shared these theories with. Bringing up the possibility of Zarkon being a clone, or dead, or a puppet for some shadow society with other Galra would probably get him sentenced for treason.

“So you’re just really into conspiracy theories, huh?” The realization had Lance grinning.

Keith lifted his brows. “Is that significant?”

He shook his head.

He just found it hilarious that an alien would probably be obsessed with Roswell and Area 51. But that was too much Earth lore to get into at the moment. He wanted to hear more about the elaborate conspiracy keeping the Galra empire afloat.

“So this council makes all the decisions on behalf of “Zarkon”,” Keith said, doing the Galra equivalent of air quotes, which was some elaborate hand gesture. He’d sat down, legs crossed under him like an excited kid. “All the higher ups are involved—well, maybe not Thace, but definitely Sendak.”

Lance didn’t know who Thace was, but he’d already encountered Sendak.

“Sendak’s actually dead,” Lance said.

“Oh?”

“Well, we shot him out of an airlock, so I assume that’s how he ended up.”

 “Really?” Keith’s brows rose. “Well. What a way to go.”

Interesting. Keith wasn’t at all bothered that a high-ranking official in his supposed shadow council was dead. He seemed somewhere between dismissive and pleased.

And he didn’t even think Zarkon was _alive_. He didn’t seem all that invested in the state of Galra affairs. But he always defended the importance of the Galra cause to Lance. Did Keith not see the disconnect between coming up with a dozen reasons Zarkon could be a fake while swearing fealty to him?

“So, what if you’re right?” Lance asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What if Zarkon’s not real, what if he died long ago, what if this is just his hundredth clone? What would you do if everything they’ve been telling you since birth is a lie?”

Keith stared at him like when Lance spouted a string of untranslatable human slang. But he’d spoken completely comprehensibly.

 “I… don’t understand,” Keith said, after much blinking. “What would I _do_?”

“Wouldn’t you be pissed? Wouldn’t you want to expose them? Revolt? At least leave?”

“Leave the ship?” he asked slowly.

“No, like, the Galra.”

Keith gaped at him, like that was the most unfathomable thing he’d ever heard.

“How does one leave something that’s everywhere?” he asked. “I mean, we have control of the whole universe, that’s the point.”

“Voltron’s freed some planets,” Lance began. After long, hard battles with too many civilian casualties. Saving the universe was hard enough with only four paladins, and now they were down to three? His friends must have replaced him by now.

Keith ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, so… I’d go there. Sure. But um, Lance? Even if I did manage to steal a ship, sneak off in the middle of the night, and get to a planet not ruled by Galra—” He spread his hands. “ _I’m_ Galra.”

It kinda sounded like this wasn’t the first time he’d considered running away.

“You’re human, too,” Lance said.

“You _think_ I am.”

Lance shuffled forward as a bad idea bubbled to life in his head. “Either way, you could—you could come with us. If—when my team comes for me…”

He was close enough to touch the back of Keith’s hand, so he did.

Keith stilled, except for the careful swivel of his head to face him.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he said quietly, mouth tight. But before Lance could pull away, Keith flipped his hand over to squeeze Lance’s fingers. He yanked him closer. “And don’t breathe a word of what I said to anyone.”

“Yeah.” He was close enough to see the dark purple rings around Keith’s iris. Lance tilted forward, drawn closer as if by a magnet. “I got you, man.”

Keith released him. “Get away from me. I need to go.”

Lance sat back on his haunches, a heavy feeling in his gut warning him that he’d gone too far.

That didn’t mean he was going to shut up.

“You’re coming back, right?” Lance asked as Keith stood. “Please don’t leave me alone again.”

Keith closed his eyes, like he was begging for the strength to do something deceptively difficult.

He let out a small sigh through his nose. “I’ll be back.”

And then he left.

Lance settled his hands on his lap and squeezed as hard as Keith had, trying to trick himself into believing that he wasn’t alone and he hadn’t ruined things. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear, Zarkon does exist in this verse lol. I just figured Keith would be into conspiracy theories no matter where he grew up, and that seemed like a good theory for him to obsess about.  
> Also, a few of you commented about liking Lance's Needy Touches™, and while I had it written that they were, like, stuck on opposite sides of the room for weeks after their encounter, that didn't seem nearly as fun. So screw delayed gratification--I added a few more scenes where they touched, thanks to you, the reader.  
> Lemme know what you thought!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for all the comments and kudos, they really keep me going, especially while I was fiddling with this chap, which I was having trouble getting exactly how I wanted for some reason. Hopefully you'll enjoy!  
> There are mentions of past violence in this chap, just fyi.

Keith returned the very next day, to Lance’s bone-melting relief. He just waltzed in, leaned against the wall and said, “Tell me about Earth.”

No greeting, no segue into conversation, no reference to conspiracies or treasonous half-formed thought of living a different life.  

That was fine, as long as he was back.

So Lance talked about the ocean, sunsets, thunderstorms. All things Keith had probably come across, in one form or another, in his travels. But he never dismissed Lance; he barely interrupted him at all. He seemed to be done talking about himself, spilling his guts about possibilities he wasn’t supposed to even think about.

After that, Keith’s visits kept up at a steady rate of every few days.

Which was stellar for a number of reasons. Lance’s headaches eased, his hallucinations got a bit easier to manage, and Keith was a great distraction from his stifling loneliness. Plus, he was getting constant exposure to Lance’s undeniable charm, which meant that soon he’d have no choice but to get him out of there.

Probably.

Maybe.

Somehow.

Most of the time, Lance believed that Keith really wasn’t authorized in any way to facilitate his escape.

Other times, there was a loud voice in Lance’s head—or in the next room over, when he couldn’t convince himself otherwise—reminding him that Keith was Galra. He respected the Galra cause, whether or not he believed Zarkon existed. He was complicit in the Galra’s crimes, and had probably committed plenty of his own.

Lance heard that voice, every time he asked Keith if he was coming back.

And he ignored it, every time he deflated with relief when Keith confirmed they’d see each other again.

He was just so pathetically grateful for company.

He’d always been transparent about wanting attention, whether on the castle ship or at home. He had no shame asking for a hug, or throwing himself at whoever was on the couch, or draping his body over his friends just because he felt like it.

He was kinda falling apart without an open pair of arms around willing to hold him.

Sometimes, when Keith was quiet and listening to Lance—not studying him, just watching him talk with a deceptively soft expression—Lance thought about asking.

Keith owed him, after all. He’d gotten him a blanket and some extra food so far, but what Lance _needed_ was a hug.

And escape.

Which Keith was preventing. Indirectly, apparently. But despite his insistence at not having the authority to do much of anything, Keith never seemed to have trouble getting into his cell.

If it was all a trick to get information out of Lance, then Keith was a much better liar than he appeared.

There was just something about the way Keith’s ears twitched, how his eyes lit curiously, almost… longingly when Lance went on and on about his team and his family. It reminded him of the way Keith’s breath hitched when he’d kissed his palm. The look in his eyes was honest. Vulnerable.

Keith didn’t seem to know how to hold anything back.

Lance was finishing up a story about him and his older siblings pulling a prank on their crotchety old neighbour, saying, “So then Mama grounded us—”

“Grounded?” Keith repeated. “What’s that?”

“A punishment.”

“In what way?”

“Uh, we couldn’t leave the house for a few weeks,” Lance explained. “Except for school.”

“How were you restrained?”

Lance’s brows popped to his forehead. “No. No, like, we just weren’t _allowed_. It was a verbal agreement. We couldn’t hang out with our friends or go to the mall or whatever.”

Keith frowned. He was sitting again, nowhere close to touching Lance, but at least it felt more like a conversation than an interrogation. “That was a deterrent from disobeying your parents?”

“Yeah. I missed the spring fling. I was pissed.”

Keith mouthed ‘spring fling’ to himself, like he did when he thought he should be able to figure out the meaning of a word himself.

“A school dance,” Lance supplied. He paused, fiddling with the corner of his foil blanket. “Um, do I even want to know how they punish Galra kids?”

“As children, before we’re assigned our posts? A week without access to the healing chamber,” he said, which wasn’t actually the answer to Lance’s question.

“Oh. How often did you usually need to use a healing chamber?”

“Not weekly,” Keith said. “But we’d have to spar with officers above our rank, too.”

Lance ran his fingers through the short hair at the nape of his neck, trying to not sound horrified as he asked, “And I guess they didn’t go easy on you?”

“Of course not,” he said. Then he added with a lifted shoulder, “Well, at first I think they—what do you call it? Half-assed it.”

“Why?”

Keith squeezed the hilt of his sword. “I guess they didn’t think I was worth their energy.”

“Wouldn’t they think that about anyone below their rank?”

He tugged at his ear, not meeting Lance’s eye. He shook his head. “They’ve never taken me seriously.”

Lance remembered Keith’s prickly reaction when he’d asked him how he’d never noticed he was different from the rest of the Galra. Obviously Lance’s arrival hadn’t been the first time he’d felt out of place.

“You said “at first”. Does that mean you kicked their asses?”

Another blink-and-you-miss-it smile lit Keith’s lips. Lance was going to have to stop blinking.

“Yes,” he said, a quiet smugness radiating from him. “I’ve always trained twice as hard as any of my peers. They didn’t expect anything from me.” His shoulders slumped against the wall. “But then they came down on me even harder. It was embarrassing that I beat them, I guess. I couldn’t back down though, or I’d die from my injuries. It was quite the week.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, not quite knowing what to say.

The nonchalance with which Keith talked about narrowly escaping his own demise sent a coldness sinking down Lance’s spine.

Keith basically grew up a child soldier, and yeah, maybe that was the norm for Galra, but he was part human, too. And that was fucked up for _any_ kid, even if they didn’t realize it. Maybe especially if they didn’t realize there were other options, better ways to be raised.

Lance couldn’t help but wonder how many Galra would voluntarily fight on behalf of Zarkon if death wasn’t a potential punishment any time they disobeyed their superiors.

Keith shifted, leaning an arm against his knee and stretching his other leg in front of him. “At least Lotor and I weren’t stationed on the same ship at the time. He would’ve killed me for sure.”

Lance hummed, lips pressed together. “What’s his deal with you?”

“I beat him in training exercise once,” Keith said. He added at a mutter, “Didn’t know I was supposed to coddle a star soldier but whatever.”

Lance snorted in amusement, even though the overall subject matter wasn’t funny at all. “So he’s been trying to get a rematch this whole time?”

He shook his head. “I gave him one. He broke my legs and a couple ribs. Cracked my skull. If Thace hadn’t got me to a healing pod, Lotor would’ve finished me off.”

“What the fuck?” Lance sat up out of his slouch. “In a _training exercise_?”

Which wasn’t his main issue, but Keith was so calm talking about a fellow crew mate _cracking his skull open_ just to get back at him. Would he even understand why Lance was so appalled? Or did that little encounter get swept away by a hundred other terrible things in daily Galra life?

Keith frowned, uncomfortable even though Lance hadn’t even begun to express his concern. “I thought we’d confirmed our training exercises are similar.”

“We don’t try to kill each other.”

“Well. Lotor’s a—” He said something untranslatable.

“Sadist? Cold-blooded killer?”

“I think the closest translation would be “dick”,” Keith said. “Lotor’s a dick.”

Again, Lance laughed even though nothing was that amusing. “I mean, I think that’s an understatement, but okay. Is he at least done with you now?”

Keith shook his head. “He doesn’t like losing, and me not dead is a loss for him. I just steer clear of the training room when he’s there.”

“Mm hm,” Lance nodded, a chill creeping over him all over again. “That sounds like an effective long-term plan.”

He tried to shake off his concern, his fear for Keith. Because there was nothing he could do. And Keith didn’t even seem to care. It was fine.

Well, not _fine_. None of this was fine.

But there was nothing Lance could do.

 

Lance was trying to sleep. He’d stuffed his shirt under his head as a makeshift pillow and he was wrapped up in his blanket like a burrito. Unfortunately there was absolutely no padding and the floor was as rock hard as always.

The door’s hiss shook Lance out of his light slumber.

“Five more minutes,” he grumbled.

He’d come out of his fourth battle a little while ago. He just wanted some peace, and to forget about the weird rock thing he’d had to kill. It reminded him too much of the Balmerans. Of Shay. It wasn't anything like them—it didn't talk or anything. Just another mindless monster the druids had cooked up. Still, it screeched in pain when Lance had shoved a crowbar between its joints, popping it apart until it couldn't hurt him anymore.

Lance was exhausted.

“It's the middle of the day,” Keith said.

“So?” Lance muttered, not lifting his head from his arms. “It’s not like I have anything better to do. Respect my schedule for once.”

Keith’s mouth tightened. Disappointed? “Fine. I'll just give you this and go.”

“Don’t do that,” Lance scowled, sitting up. He repositioned his blanket around his shoulders. “Stay.”

Keith still tossed him whatever he had in his pocket. It looked like a large-ish pebble.

“Uh?”

“It's a treat?” Keith said. “To eat. I don't know if you have a specific name for it.”

Lance licked the sparkly grey thing. “Candy?”

“Yeah, I guess. I got a few at the last trading post.”

Lance tossed it back. Salty sour. Unexpected. “I can't really see you buying candy.”

“They were tossed in free with purchase of a sword.”

Lance nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Do you like it?”

“Mm hm,” he hummed as he sucked on it. “Better than those freaking nutrition bricks.”

Keith leaned against the wall, crossing one foot over the other. “Not as good as what your crewmate makes, right? The chef?”

“Hunk?” He smiled sadly. “Yeah, not as good as his desserts.”

“So your crew…” He scratched his left ear. “They're your friends, even though you work with them?”

“Yeah, of course. Kind of hard not to be friends when you spend that much time together, right?”

Keith shrugged.

“Well, who are your friends?” Lance asked, suspecting the answer.

Keith was quiet for a moment. Lance half-expected him to say something about Galra not having the concept of friendship. What he went with was a little sadder.

“I don't need friends.”

“Well, sucks. Because you got one.”

He rolled his eyes, _hard_ , and Lance again struck by the similarity between their cultures. Separated by lightyears and galaxies, but eye rolling was somehow universal.

His eyes landed back on Lance, who was sucking obnoxiously on the candy. “How do humans define a friend, Lance?”

He shrugged. “Someone you share common interests with, you like hanging out with, spending time with—”

“You enjoy our time spent together?” he asked dryly.

“Yeah.”

Keith seemed honestly taken aback. Then the grumpiness set back in. “You're a prisoner.”

“I've noticed.” Lance flapped the blanket around his shoulders, foil crinkling. “It's kind of all I've been thinking about for months, except when you show up and distract me.”

“Well _sorry_ for—oh.” He stopped mid-sarcastic retort. “You meant that as… something nice.” Warring emotions flashed across his face. His hand went to his sword hilt in what Lance was pretty sure was a self-soothing gesture. “But the way you talk about your friends, Pidge and Hunk and the rest of your crew… It sounds like you’d do anything for them?”

“Of course.”

“And they’d do anything for you?”

He nodded. He saw where this was going.

“We're not friends, Lance.”

And the guilt etched across his features almost comforted Lance, because you didn’t feel guilt about someone you didn’t care for.

“Maybe we're just not _good_ friends,” Lance admitted. “Not everybody is ride or die.”

“Ride or die?” Keith repeated.

He always managed to be sceptical of internet slang or memes. Not like Coran, who Lance had convinced that Rick Rolling was an exemplary form of human subterfuge.

“Like… your ride or die squad,” Lance said. “You’re with them through the good and bad, and you’d die for them, if it came to that. They just… they have your back.”

Keith’s brows drew together. “Shouldn’t that be ride _and_ die?”

“What? No. Don't argue with me.”

Keith’s ears twitched back, wholly unimpressed, but continued his line of questioning. “So you and your teammates, you're all ride or die?”

“Again, kind of hard not to be. Since dying is literally on the table.”

He tilted his head. “Wait. Did this term originate on Earth? Where you go to school and the beach, and live in peace?”

Lance kind of loved the picture of Earth he was painting for Keith. “Yeah.”

“How did that phrase come to be when you'd have no reason to die for each other?”

“It’s an exaggeration. Just go with it.”

“But how would you know if someone was ride or die without the possibility of having to sacrifice yourself?”

He wasn’t getting it.

“Just, being there for you, like—okay, example of friends who _weren’t_ ride or die.” Lance settled on an explanation. “I was at this camp when I was twelve—summer camp, for fun, for kids when we weren't at school,” he clarified quick when Keith gawked at the word “camp”.

The Galra had a different definition of camps. Like locking away colonized populations on their own land.

Lance took a moment to reset, like he always did when he was reminded of some horrible thing the Galra had done. Or _were_ doing, present tense, somewhere in the universe. It wasn’t like he ever forgot, but Keith’s Galra-ness faded to the back of his mind sometimes, despite his fluffy ears and purple skin constantly on display.

“So the kids at this camp,” Lance said after he shook himself. “I called them my friends, but they weren't really. None of them liked me.”

“Why not?”

“I dunno, kids are mean,” he breezed past.

He’d been desperate, loud, annoying, trying too hard. None of that had really changed, he’d just smoothed it out. Except that desperation. It was at an all-time high.

He pushed his hair back, wincing at how greasy it was. “But, you know—or, you don't know, but on Earth, adults force kids to include each other in things. Pretend to be nice. So they couldn't, like, shun me. But they treated me like shit. Never let me do the fun stuff. The only time I was in on the joke was when I _was_ the joke, you—”

He was going to say “you know” again, but Keith didn't.

“Why wouldn't you disengage yourself from them?” Keith asked like it was obvious. “Why would you keep trying to gain their approval?”

On the other hand, maybe Keith _did_ know something about being the joke. Maybe the other Galra hadn’t taken him seriously even after he started kicking ass and taking names.

“Because I need friends,” Lance said. “I need people.”

And attention. Validation. Approval. God, he was needy.

“I'd classify those children as enemies, not friends,” Keith said. “So we’re sure not friends.”

Lance didn’t like his resolve.

“I get perks with you,” Lance insisted. He slipped the hard candy Keith gave him between his teeth and showed it off. “Not all Galra would give me candy.”

He scowled. “Yeah, I could be beating the shit out of you, right? You’re so lucky to have me.”

“I sure am,” he said flippantly.

“Lance!”

“What?”

His ears flicked flat. “Those children weren’t your friends and neither am I.”

He crossed his arms. “Um, I have loads of friends and you’ve had none, which makes me the authority on the matter, and I say we’re friends. So.”

He stuck his tongue out and almost flicked the candy out with it. He slapped a hand over his mouth to keep it in and then crunched down on the candy to keep it from slipping away.

Keith waited for him to finish that before drilling the concept into his head. “I can’t get you out, not with nobody noticing. Not without putting my ass on the line. I’m not dying for you.”

Lance sat up on his knees. “I’m not asking you to die. You could come _with_ me—”

“Stop saying that.” His fists clenched. “You can’t cling to people who treat you like shit just because you’re lonely.”

Lance pouted. “Can too.”

What he _could_ do was different from what he _should_ do.

Keith let out a frustrated groan.

“And you don’t treat me like shit,” Lance muttered.

Keith crouched in front of him, a sharp glint in his eye. “Well, I think _I_ should be the authority on that—”

He trailed off, or Lance just stopped listening, because all his attention was focused on his fingers trailing along Keith’s hard jaw right there in front of him

Lance watched his Adam’s apple bob, his hand clench on his sword hilt.

“Why do you always do that?” Keith asked, jaw barely shifting.

Lance assumed he was referring to touching him at any given opportunity, even though common sense dictated that he keep his damn hands to himself.

But Lance had already told him why—he was lonely. He needed it.

“Why do you let me?” Lance asked the better question.

Though it probably had the same answer, if the ways Keith’s eyes fluttered shut was any indication. Dainty purple veins coloured his lids, and long lashes fanned across his cheekbones.

Keith didn’t move—praying for patience, or strength of will, or maybe just… enjoying the moment. He must’ve been, or else he’d have shoved Lance away like every other time.

They stayed like that for a moment, quietly breathing together, connected and calm.

Then Keith said, “You can’t be doing this.”

“So move,” Lance said gently as he buried his fingers into the thick, soft hair at the nape of Keith's neck. Mullet, really. Keith had a mullet. How hadn’t he noticed that before?

Keith shivered. His eyes opened, so close to Lance’s face now. He didn’t look half as settled as when his eyes were closed. “You haven’t listened to a thing I said. It’s like talking to a _wall_.”

“I’ve been talking to a lot of walls lately,” Lance said. “Trust me, you’re much better conversation.”

Rudely, Keith didn’t seem to find his joke funny.

His brows lowered, and he slid Lance’s hand off him until it ended back in his lap. Lance squeezed it tight before he could pull away.

Keith’s dark gaze bore into him for a few heavy moments. “Then talk. Because that’s all I can offer you.”

Maybe right _now_. But that could change. Anything was possible, and Keith wasn’t a good liar—he wanted to help Lance. Lance could feel it. He could see it in his eyes, in the way his fingers were still twisted up in Lance’s.

Lance had him so close to being on his side. Keith might throw his whole belief system out the window any day now. Lance just had to hold out a little longer, cook up some heartfelt plea that would push him over the edge.

He could do this. Keith would help him. And maybe Lance could help Keith too, because he didn’t belong here any more than Lance did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this concludes the portion of the story where they're mostly just talking, barely moving, in a small empty room lmao. I'm glad you guys like endless dialogue as much as me, but next chapter things pick up with some action! (Not the team yet, don't get too excited, but we are well on our way.)  
> Also update on the ending: I've written like 10k of an """epilogue""" which is three times as long as any other chapter, soooo we might end up w/ more than 15 chapters lol.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your kind feedback!! I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint.   
> Heads-up, there's violence in this one and, just so I don't catch anyone off-guard, Lance contemplating giving his life for another (don't worry, he's fine).

Lance was tossed into the arena as ungraciously as ever. Not by Lotor—he’d only presented Lance like a stuffed pig to the roaring crowd the first time. Maybe the prince thought Lance’s continued survival was a failure to him, just like Keith’s, and couldn’t bear to face him.

The doors hissed as they slid shut behind him.

Lance’s hands were glaringly empty. “Hey, can I get a gun—?”

They slammed closed with a thudding finality.

And he didn’t have a weapon.

A sick, twisty feeling churned in his gut. Did they really need an extra twist to be entertained? He was already fighting for his life, wasn’t that enough?

Lance squinted past the harsh spotlights blocking the crowd from view. But he could hear them, hundreds of cheering Galra, clear as day. He wondered if Keith was watching. If there was one person out there rooting for his survival.

He shook his head. He didn’t have time for yearning.

Lance moved quietly as he searched for the threat, footsteps light and breathing controlled. One of the many techniques Shiro had taught him that ended up useful—how to control his extremities, if only in the heat of battle.

Stacks of crates towered around Lance, good for nothing but blocking his view of the latest druid monstrosity. Just like Keith had told him, the crates were brittle and unclimbable, made of something comparable to wood. They were alright as last-chance stakes if it came down to it, though.

He was weighing the pros and cons of smashing a crate when he saw it.

A blaster lying on a crate. So innocuous, yet it sent a shiver down Lance's spine.

What were the Galra playing at this time? What was he supposed to be attacking? Why hadn't they just given him a gun? If they were teasing him, why wasn’t his opponent chasing him during his hunt for a weapon?

Movement from the other side of the blaster caught his eye.

Lance threw himself forward on instinct. He needed a weapon; he was _getting_ a weapon.

His opponent had the same idea.

Lance didn’t even see what it was—just a blur hurtling toward his goal.

Lance got there first.

He had the blaster aimed at the thing in a second.

His opponent was barely taller than Lance; gangly and humanoid, with peachy, globby skin splattered with green freckles.

And a grey, tattered prisoner's uniform to match Lance’s.

Lance snapped the blaster to his side, out of range of his fellow prisoner.

“Sorry.”

The prisoner’s long tongue flicked out to lick their bulging eyeballs.

“Don't worry, I'm a professional,” Lance said, spinning slowly to check out his surroundings. “Do you know what we’re up against?”

The crash of falling crates sounded from the center of the ring.

Lance tensed, his blaster up and ready. He took a deep breath in, centering himself in the situation, taking note of every shadow and whispered noise.

Then he headed in the direction of the crash, motioning for the other prisoner to stick behind him.

He was in his element. Defending others. Fighting with a cause. He felt more alive than he had in weeks, adrenaline coursing through his system. Giving him someone to protect was the best thing that could’ve happened to him here.

It didn’t take long to find the monster. Tentacles were involved. All that was visible above the crates were a dozen thick, maroon tentacles whipping through the air.

Which brought up the question of how many charges his blaster had. He doubted it was one per tentacle, so he tried to save them as he fought it.

He mostly stomped on them, or squished the tentacles with the butt of his blaster, which he wasn’t sure was working.

He had to injure the core of it, the body. He was trying to get close enough to knock over a stack of crates into where the tentacles sprouted from, but before he had the chance, something slick wrapped around his ankle.

“Whuh—?” He had just enough time to _think_ about shooting the tentacle creeping up his leg

Then he was jerked into the air, upside down, blood rushing to his head.

Absently, he heard the crowd going nuts, frothing at the mouth for Lance to finally get what was coming to him.

But Lance refused. Not today. Not when he had someone to save.

From this angle, waving through the air, he could finally see the core of the beast, hidden within a stack of crates. Its mound of a head was suctioned to the ground with no discernible facial features.

Lance brought his blaster up, lining up his sights as the tentacle jerked him around, and let loose a steady stream until the tentacles stopped moving.

Which, coincidentally, sent Lance plummeting back to the ground. He crashed onto a pile of crates, making his twelve-foot fall more like eight. So that was good.

And the threat was neutralized. Also good.

What wasn’t as good was the sharp piece of wood piercing his liver. Or his kidney. Or something—he’d never been great at anatomy, but there was a stick in his back somewhere.

Not ideal.

Technically, he was lucky it was just the _one_ stab wound, but he wasn’t feeling too blessed as he rolled off the crates, biting back a yelp of pain.

He kneeled on the packed dirt, gritting his teeth as he twisted around for a better look.

Oh, oh shit he was bleeding out, okay. The stake had popped out and now he just had a gaping wound. Alright.

He took a deep, wavering breath, convincing himself there was nothing to worry about. The guards always stuck him in a healing pod if he got roughed up enough. It kept the cycle going. Nobody wanted to watch him die slowly from his injuries. They wanted him ripped apart.

He looked around, for once impatient for the guards to reach him. But something was off.

It was too quiet.

He’d killed their monster. Why weren’t the victor sirens blaring? Why wasn’t the crowd cheering and booing in equal measure?

A tentacle wrapped around his throat.

_Shit_. Of course it couldn’t be that easy.

He shot wildly at the head in front of him, but he was still jerked back on his knees.

He twisted his head, suction cups sucking at his neck, and found the other prisoner behind him. Teeth gritted, eyebrow spots drawn together. Ends of a discarded tentacle were wrapped around each clenched fist.

“Wait,” Lance gasped. “We can work this out. We—”

What? What could they do? What could Lance do? This was a Battle Royale. And if the Galra wanted one winner, they’d damn well get one, lonely winner.

Why had he thought it would be any different this time?

The prisoner tightened the tentacle around Lance’s throat.

Lance acted on instinct. Threw his head into his opponent’s face. Whacked an elbow out. Their grip loosened. Lance scrambled around, taking them out at the knees before throwing himself onto their chest.

That’s what you do, in battle.

Incapacitate the enemy.

And then what? What do you do when the enemy is crying, fat tears leaking down their cheeks, and they’re blubbering a prayer to some god you’ve never heard of?

Because you’ve got a gun plastered to their forehead.

Because that’s what you _do_.

Lance was still shocked when he found his finger on the trigger. Wondering how on Earth it got there.

But this wasn’t Earth. This was a billion miles away from home and everything he’d known to be true. He wasn’t the person he used to be.

So when he leaned back and lowered his gun, and the alien bucked him off their chest, Lance fought back.

He cried out in pain, stab wound screaming for attention, as the two fought for the weapon. But he still managed to smack the prisoner in the face with it.

They collapsed, out cold, on the ground.

Lance was straddling them again. Blood coated them both, and it was all his.

The prisoner was still breathing, mostly fine. They’d survive.

The spotlights blinded Lance as he turned his face upwards, begging the victor sirens to sound. He’d won, he’d won, he’d finished the fight. Could they please end this? Could they just heal him—

“Don’t make me, don’t make me,” Lance begged, throat swollen.

His vision swam, or maybe he was just swaying. Hot blood gushed down his side every time he moved.

“Fuck,” he sobbed as he lifted the gun to the prisoner’s forehead. Unconscious, incapable of defending themself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, _lo siento_ —”

A dull click sounded when he pulled the trigger.

“No,” he hiccupped. “No. Nooo.”

_Click. Click. Click._

He let the empty blaster fall to his side.

The crowd sounded like the surf breaking on a rocky shore. Deafening. Infinite. He could almost taste the salty brine of the wind on his tongue.

But it was probably just his blood.

He choked out a breath. Red droplets splattered onto the prisoner’s slack face.

With shaking hands, Lance pinned the blaster to their throat, hoping the alien’s respiratory system was the same as humans’. Hoping it _wasn’t_. Because Lance would die before he could figure out, but at least that way he wouldn’t have murdered an innocent person—

The alien’s chest stopped rising. It just fell, one last time.

The victor siren blared.

The crowd went wild.

Lance blacked out.

 

Voltron hadn’t been together long when they got into a scuffle at a Galra security base. Lance was shooting wildly, a spray of laser beams, trying to take them all down.

Shiro snapped and said, “Pick _one_.”

So Lance peeked over the barrel he was hiding behind and set his sights on one Galra at random. He squeezed the trigger, a solid stream of _pew, pew, pew_.

He was so used to the Galra shrugging off a blast or two or five that he wasn’t expecting this one to go down. But he did. Between one step and the next, he hit the ground face-first.

Lance stared at him, waiting for a trick. But blood seeped across the concrete, and the Galra didn’t get up.

“Um.”

Shiro grabbed his arm. Pidge had found the information they needed, so they were retreating.

Shiro dragged him out of there, Lance babbling the whole time, “Did I kill him? Shiro, was he dead? Did I kill him?”

Shiro didn’t respond until they were back on the castle ship, where he sat him down and said, “He chose that, Lance. Galra don’t surrender. It’s the only way to stop them.”

Lance blinked, staring sightlessly at Shiro’s face; his blistered scar, the shock of white hair, his serious, somber eyes. “I killed him.”

Shiro took his shoulder. “It was nothing compared to what the Galra have done, and will continue to do, if we don’t stop them. You did the right thing. Do you understand?”

He licked his dry lips. “We’re gonna have to kill a lot of them, aren’t we?”

“We’re saving the universe, Lance.”

And that was how Lance justified it. They were defending the universe. Helping people. They were the good guys. Lance was a good guy.

Lance used to be a good guy.

 

He woke up back in his cell. New clothes. Blood washed off. Back wound downgraded to a dull twinge. His blanket was gone, too. Along with… his self-respect? His self-worth? His sense of something.

He thumped his head against the wall.

He didn’t know how much time passed until Keith showed up.

Keith didn’t say anything at first.

Neither did Lance, which must’ve thrown Keith off. He looked lost at the responsibility of starting a conversation.

He leaned against the door, as far away as he could get from Lance curled up in the corner.

“You hesitated,” Keith finally said. After a lengthy pause, he added, “Before killing the Amphlian.”

That was one more thing that Lance knew about the person he’d killed. That they were Amphlian. From Amphlia, maybe? Lance had never heard of the race, or the planet they might’ve called home.

Keith had, though. Because he’d spent his life travelling the stars. Conquering and killing and following Zarkon’s orders—or his clone’s, or shadow society’s or whatever. Did it really matter whether Zarkon was real or not when Keith obeyed him all the same?

“You wouldn’t have hesitated?” Lance asked. His voice barely shook, which he took pride in.

“It was you or them,” Keith said instead of giving a real answer.

“I _know_. I was there.” He dragged shaking hands through his hair, trying to pull himself together. He glared up at Keith. “Did you know they were gonna do that?”

Keith ducked his head. “It’s something they do.”

“What’s this “they”?” Lance demanded. “It’s you. You’re one of them.”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “But I didn’t know—”

“Yeah, because you don’t have clearance, right? You can’t do anything. But you never have any problem getting in here!” He pointed an angry finger at him. “How do I know you’re not lying? That you could get me out any time, and you and your Galra buddies are laughing it up about how you’re tricking me into trusting you?”

“I don’t have buddies. I have _you_ ,” he said heatedly. “And if you trust me, that’s your fault.”

He spun for the door.

Lance wilted.

But before he could beg Keith to stay, he paused all on his own. His profile was angular and fluffy and purple.

“Do you want me to stay?”

“ _Yes_.” Yes, god, obviously. Of course Lance didn’t want to be alone. He wanted Keith to stay, to _be_ here. To just… “Please don’t go.”

Keith turned back to him, shoulders tight. His gaze weighed heavy on Lance. “If you hadn’t killed the other prisoner, you’d have died.”

“So?”

“ _So_?” Keith repeated. “So you must’ve killed people before. What—”

“People who deserved it,” Lance said past a lump in his throat. “People who stood a chance. Who had the option of surrender.”

“Galra don’t surrender.”

“You _could_.” He flicked a hand at the door. “But that—that Amphlian? You think they really wanted to kill me? After I saved them?” His voice broke.

Keith waited until Lance brushed away fresh tears before saying quietly, “You did what you had to do.”

“I didn't have to. I would’ve been dead in minutes.”

“Exactly—”

“What kind of paladin am I to put an innocent person’s life over mine?”

Keith stared at him for a long moment, incredulity growing by the second. “An _alive_ one.”

Lance shook his head, chest shaking. “I don't know what I'll do next time—”

Between one second and the next Keith was crouched before him, calloused fingers on his chin. His eyes were steady and his words were strong. “You will fight. You will fight until you think you'll die and then? You will continue to fight. Do you understand me?”

Lance wrapped his hand around his wrist. Keith’s pulse beat hummingbird-quick against his fingers. Maybe Galra heartbeats were just naturally faster?

“Keith—”

His grip tightened on his face. “Don’t. I don't want to see what your team will do to us if they come to rescue you and you’re already dead.”

His chin wobbled against Keith’s palm. “You really think they're coming for me?”

The crease between his eyebrows deepened. He slipped a hand onto Lance’s wet cheek, thumb catching a tear. “Of course. They’re ride or die, aren’t they?”

A wobbly smile pulled at Lance’s mouth. He closed his eyes, leaning into the steady warmth of Keith’s palm.

But the image of the Amphlian’s terrified face was seared to the back of his eyelids. They looked like their life was passing them in a flash and they were mourning all the things they’d never get to do.

They were just like Lance, a prisoner ripped from the middle of their life, longing to return. No different from the prisoners Voltron had freed from another prison ship, when they stole back the red lion. They’d been in awe of Shiro. The Champion.

Who was Lance? A bogeyman. An unstoppable, terrifying force.

Lance choked out sob. “I don’t—I can’t do that again—”

“Hey.” Keith cupped the back of his head, forcing Lance to look at him. Intent worry was streaked across his features. “Hey, yes you can. You’ll have to, Lance. You’re gonna do everything you can—”

“But—”

He cut him off. “Do you not want to see your family again? Do you want them to be right thinking you’re dead?”

“No, but—”

“Do you want your team to come all this way just to rescue a corpse?”

His breath hitched. “No, but—”

“This isn’t a debate.” Keith took a deep breath before leaning forward to press his chest against Lance’s, in the most awkward initiation of a hug he’d ever experienced. “You’re not giving up.”

Lance’s shaky half-laugh immediately bubbled into a sob as he collapsed against him.

Keith tentatively rested his hands on his back. Lance curled his arms around Keith’s waist, hoping he’d take the hint to hug him like he meant it. Hold him tight enough to make him forget what he’d done to survive.

Keith’s grip slowly tightened, until he was clutching Lance to his chest almost painfully hard. It still wasn’t enough. Lance felt like nothing more than a bag of bones, kept from falling to pieces only by the strong circle of Keith’s arms.

Eventually he settled, swollen eyes wrung out of tears. It had to be the longest Keith had ever stayed.

“I think you need to go,” Lance murmured into his shoulder.

“Yes,” Keith said, but didn’t stand.

Lance breathed in tandem with him, lungs expanding and contracting at the same rate. He could fall asleep like this, easy. He’d get a crick in his neck but he might not get nightmares. He might even feel like a real person when he woke up.

“Won’t you get in trouble?”

“Yes.” His hold didn’t loosen.

Lance lifted his head. Keith’s jaw was tight. He was glaring at the wall like he wanted it to burn straight through.

“Keith?”

He blinked slowly as he lowered his gaze to Lance’s. “You… you’ll fight?”

“Yeah,” he said, voice barely a whisper.

Keith pulled back, bringing his hand between them. Gravely, he said, “Pinky promise?”

He chuckled wetly, linking his pinky with Keith’s. “Pinky promise.”

“Thank you.” His dark eyes roamed his face like he couldn’t stop looking. “I’ll be back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh... at least Lance finally got a hug lol.   
> Next chapter's gonna be Keith POV!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! As always, thank you for your feedback! Over 100 comments and 500 kudos?? Holy, that's a lot for me!  
> So, here's a very important Keith POV! And some more violence, just fyi.

Keith couldn’t shake the phantom weight of Lance in his arms. He wondered if he’d ever get rid of the emptiness ballooning inside him, like his body was missing something imperative.

It was throwing him off; he couldn’t concentrate with Lance’s sobs bouncing around his head like they’d echoed through the cell.

So Keith wasn’t exactly surprised when, after the worst training session of his life, Thace requested to speak to him in private.

If anyone other than Thace had asked him, he’d have blown them off. Which would’ve been a potentially fatal move, but he couldn’t bring himself to give a shit about pissing off his superiors, or staying under the radar, or anything else he’d been striving to do his whole life.

But Thace had saved his ass more times than Keith could count, so he met him in his private chambers as requested. It was just a small room with a bed, desk, and a holo-screen, but it was lavish compared to the barracks Keith slept in.

The door barely had time to slide shut before Thace was glaring down at him, arms crossed over his buff chest. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Performing my duty as always, sir,” Keith said tightly.

“No, you're acting like a reckless child,” he said with more heat than a botched training exercise deserved.

He had to bite his tongue from huffing out, _Whatever_. The conversation had barely started and he already couldn’t stand it. It just wasn’t worth his time.

He should be doing everything he could to get Lance out of that cell and throw him in an escape pod with a fresh blanket. But biting Thace’s head off would result in a disciplining, and Keith was grown now. He’d get worse than a week without a healing pod.

“You spent my entire shift in that cell yesterday,” Thace said, “and now you’re falling behind in training? What are you thinking?”

Keith’s attention had largely been on what to do with Lance, but with Thace’s words, his focus narrowed down to Thace’s grave face

The beating of his heart was suddenly thunderously loud in his ears.

Thace had always been one of the softer officers—meaning, he didn’t seem to take glee in punishing his subordinates (like a certain _prince_ , who was nowhere near Thace’s position but acted like it anyway).

Which was why Keith always visited Lance while Thace was on duty.

But Thace couldn’t know. If he did, he’d have stopped Keith from the start.

This had to be a trap. A test.

Keith drew his shoulders back, lifting his chin. “I have better things to do with my spare time than bother prisoners.”

“I agree,” Thace said. “And yet you’ve been meeting with the paladin nearly every day since his arrival.”

Sweat broke out across the nape of his neck.

Why would Thace allow Keith to slip past him? Over and over, for months? Did he intend to blackmail Keith? It wasn't as if he had anything of value and, as a senior officer, Thace could order him to do just about anything without any coercion.

He didn’t want to consider what Thace might have in store for him with this extra ammo.

So he gave nothing away. “I've seen him once, when he was first brought here. Haggar forbid me from even attending the battles he’s participated in.”

Even though she wasn’t on this ship anymore. But her word was law, and Keith was getting pretty comfortable sneaking around the vents, anyway. It was definitely better than sitting in the middle of the frothing crowd cheering for Lance’s demise.

“And do you know why she’s done that?” Thace asked.

“No, sir,” Keith said stiffly. “Whatever Haggar thinks is best—”

“She forbade you from seeing him for the same reason you can’t stay away.” Thace stepped back leisurely, looking at the holo-screen programmed to display the glittering stars the ship passed. “You want to know if he’s like you. If you’re like him.” He inclined his head toward Keith. “Do you want to know the truth?”

“Yes,” came out of his mouth before he’d consciously decided to speak.

Did Thace _know_? Would he tell Keith if he did?

His fingers twitched at his side, waiting for the pregnant pause to close.

“Why?” Thace finally said. “You’re Galra. You will be Galra until you die.”

Keith wanted to argue, but couldn’t find the words.

Thace wasn’t wrong.

He was Galra, there was no denying that.

And if he was human? The idea shook him, but what difference would it make if it were true? It wouldn’t give him a home on Earth, with its peace and yearning for good.

Being human wouldn’t change anything. Would it?

Keith was still convincing himself not to beg Thace for an answer when Thace said, “You’re being sent out on assignment.”

“What? _Why_?”

Maybe last week he’d have been grateful for the distraction, but it wasn’t last week, it was today. And yesterday Keith had clutched an inconsolable Lance in his arms, awkwardly, stiffly, and he probably hadn’t helped at all, but he wanted to.

He couldn’t leave Lance now.

“You should be grateful for this opportunity,” Thace reminded him pointedly.

Yes, it was always a privilege to get off-ship. But that didn’t matter to Keith. What mattered was Lance.

Which must’ve shown plain on his face.

Thace looked at him intently. “Keith, humans are an entirely different breed. And that boy in there is a paladin of Voltron. He and his kin fight against everything Zarkon has worked millennia to achieve. If he’s convinced you to trust him, you need to think about why.”

“I’m not stupid, I know he might be using me—”

“ _Might_?” he repeated, fangs sharp behind his lips. “You think his deceit is only a possibility? What’s the alternative? That he truly enjoys your company?”

Keith ducked his head, shame colouring his cheeks. “I know. I _know_ —”

“Do you?” Thace’s golden eyes bore into him. He pointed at the door. “That paladin represents the end of life as you know it. If you side with him, you side against Zarkon and the Galra empire. You agree to give your life to a different cause. Are you willing to do that for this boy?”

Keith opened his mouth. He wasn’t sure what was going to come out.

Thace grabbed his arm in a vice grip. “Don’t answer that. _Think_. Consider. Just because he has a face like yours doesn’t mean that you mean anything to him, Keith. You need to be sure that if he turns against you, you won’t regret what you’ve done. Because you don’t just want to help him, but you believe in his cause, too.”

Which was not the Galra-or-bust mentality Keith was expecting, but he didn’t bother to examine that.

He’d held Lance in his arms, knowing that at any moment Lance could go for his sword. And Keith would’ve let him. Lance could’ve stabbed him, or threatened him, or _anything_ , and Keith would’ve gone along with it if it meant Lance could be free.

 Which was more than terrifying, it was… reckless, just as Thace had accused him of being.

But that hadn’t stopped Keith from reading up on security protocols and mapping out a route to the nearest escape pod last night.

“This mission will give you time to consider your priorities,” Thace said.

“I’ve considered them—” Keith began heatedly.

“You depart before the next sleep cycle,” he cut him off with no room for argument.

Why was this conversation even happening? Since when was Keith allowed to decide on his own priorities? The priority of every Galra was the continuation of the Galra race and ensuring Zarkon’s power. No questions asked.

Why was Thace giving him the option of considering anything else?

“You’re dismissed,” Thace said before Keith could open his mouth.

 

In the end, Keith couldn’t argue with his superiors.

He also couldn’t give Lance a heads up that he’d be away.

That was mostly where his head was at when his unit arrived on Sa’rase—a hot, desert planet in the same galaxy their prison ship had been circling since they’d captured Lance, waiting patiently for Voltron to come for him.

And then the Galra would capture them, obviously, because they had more fire power and soldiers and _everything,_ and then…?

Keith shook his head.

The rebels they were sent to neutralize were better prepared than the Galra records indicated, so quelling the rebellion was taking longer than he’d expected. He was starting to think that Sa’arase teamed up with a neighbouring planet; there were a lot disquieted settlements in the area, and they all seemed to be stirring at once.

But a large-scale uprising wasn’t Keith’s concern as he took the rebels out on auto-pilot.

He couldn’t stop thinking about how much Lance would hate this.

But it was war.

“All’s fair in love and war, right?” Lance had bit out one day during a rather strained discussion on morality. “But whose war is this? The universe didn’t agree to fight the Galra for thousands of years.”

“It’s not about agreement. It’s about power. And we’ve got it.”

“So you’re gonna keep going until everyone bows at your feet?”

He just didn’t _get_ it. “They’re weak. They need a leader. We’re helping.”

Lance had stared at him for a long moment before scowling. “Of all the things to be universal, why’s it gotta be colonialism?”

Keith was starting to see what Lance was getting at. There were enough planets that would never even _think_ about rebelling that giving up control of one planet—even a whole solar system—wouldn’t make any difference to the Galra.

And sometimes they conquered a planet where the native inhabitants fought so hard that it would undeniably be easier to just _trade_ with them for resources. Wouldn’t it take less time, less effort, less sacrifice, to offer an equal exchange?

Keith had never suggest that, though. The older he got, the heavier the sinking feeling in his gut got, telling him that they weren’t just combing the universe for resources. They were demanding land, workers, subservience.

But anybody else with the Galra’s amount of power would do the same, right? Lance admitted it—even humans conquered what wasn’t theirs to take.

Keith’s unit commander came in over his earpiece. “There’s a rebel hideout nearby. Scope it out. Neutralize any enemies you can find. Only cowards run from a fight.”

Keith’s unit split off from the main battle and hiked across the dry, cracked earth to a gathering of shacks hidden by a rocky outcropping.

The shacks stood in wobbly rows, so Keith’s unit split up to cover more ground.

They were small, rarely more than two rooms. The first few Keith searched were empty.

Then Keith found the rebels.

Two red aliens trembled together. One older, perhaps a parent, with all four of their arms wrapped around the smaller one.

And… well. Body posture varied widely through species, but curling up against a wall and shaking was pretty consistent.

Lance had been in the same position a few days ago, unsteady hands wrapped around his knees. The other prisoners on the ship, always huddled into protective balls. Keith himself, when he was younger, much younger, too weak to handle the full brunt of his training and too injured to fight back. Curling into a ball and begging the fully grown Galra attacking him to stop, please stop.

These aliens had no interest fighting him.

His commander had to be mistaken.

Keith hesitated, sword slack in his grip.

Then a bright pain shot through the back of his head.

He spun, teeth gritting. Now here was a rebel, surely. Hiding out and using civilians as a distraction.

But the scaly, rust-coloured alien he slammed against the wall looked just as terrified as the other two. And the weapon that fell to the ground, that they’d used to attack Keith, was nothing more dangerous than a shovel.

“No, please!” the larger alien sobbed. “Don’t hurt my daughter!”

Keith frowned, looking back at them. The mother smoothed down the child’s coarse, needle-like hair to soothe their crying.

“Where are the rebels?” he snapped.

“Out where you're killing them.” The alien he had pinned against the wall spat at his feet. “Galra scum.”

“Wupa, no!” the mother cried.

These weren’t rebels. These buildings weren’t rebel hideouts. They were homes. This was a family.

His orders were to kill anyone he saw. But that couldn’t—his commander couldn’t mean this, could he? Slaughter a family hiding from a war?

The daughter kneed him in the stomach before he could decide his next move.

“Run!” Wupa shouted at her family. “Go, forget about me. Take Bubbie and go!”

She rained punches down on Keith’s ribs with practiced precision, her four fists fast and hard.

He kicked her knee, getting her to back off for a second before she threw herself at him with renewed vigour.

Their scuffle gave the mother time to wrap her young child in her arms and lift a hidden latch in the floor, disappearing down the hatch.

Soon enough though, Keith had Wupa restrained face down on the dusty floor. He dropped his sword to pin her hands at the small of her back, and then—he paused.

Their fight had only delayed the inevitable. What was he supposed to _do_?

“You gonna kill me?” she spat. “Like you killed the rest of my village?”

“I didn’t—I—” Keith shook his head. He and his unit were getting rid of the rebels who fought against the Galra. That was her people’s mistake. “They shouldn't have resisted.”

“You shouldn't have come here, you filthy furry fuck!”

Pinpricks of pain shot through his palms. He jerked back, scowling at her newly spiked hands. The spikes shooting from her knuckles had pierced his armoured gloves, but if his skin had been bare, he’d be impaled.

Wupa immediately used her freed hands for leverage against the ground and buck Keith off.

He landed on his back, knocking his head off the floor. By the time he’d started to sit up, Wupa had his sword at his throat.

“Wait!” Keith cried for no useful reason.

She had the same sneering expression as every Galra soldier about to win a fight. Death or victory, there was no in between.

She’d kill Keith like he deserved and Lance would rot in that cage until Voltron came for him.

Shit, he hoped Voltron came for Lance.

Wupa’s lips twisted, glaring down at him with vitriolic contempt strong as the blazing sun.

She brought his sword down.

He slammed his eyes shut. Lance’s face flashed across his lids. “ _Please_.”

Blinding pain erupted from his thigh. He opened his eyes, staring at the blade rising from his leg, pinning him to the ground.

Keith bit down on his shout like he’d been trained to, so he heard her next words clearly.

“I’m better than you, remember that,” she snarled as she flipped open the escape hatch. “A sand mite deserves more pity than any of you Galra fucks. Enjoy your mercy.”

 

Ten teeth-gritting minutes later, Keith’s unit responded to his distress call. They found him lying next to the rug he’d flung over the escape hatch.

“They got out the window,” he gasped.

Thulak scowled at his prone position. “Seriously, Keith? How’d women and children get the best of you?”

Keith smacked his fist off the floor. “They were supposed to be rebels!”

His anger burned as hot as his wound. Did all their missions involve killing civilians? He knew there was plenty of collateral damage, it was the cost of a war, but… breaking into houses to slaughter families? Massacring whole villages?

Even as he had the thought, he knew they’d done worse. So much worse. It what Lance kept trying to tell him.

And yet that alien showed him mercy. Not because he deserved it, but because she deserved better than to be a killer.

Thulak pointed a clawed finger at him. “Watch your tone. I can leave you here to bleed out easier than hauling you back to a healing pod.”

Keith _almost_ said he could make it back without his help. But he wasn’t quite that stubborn. And he was impatient for an important conversation.

So he shut up.

 

Keith fisted his hands, thigh throbbing, but it was nothing but an ache now, another scar. It wouldn’t stop him from doing anything, especially confronting Thace.

Half the ship’s crew was touched down on nearby planets, desperate to put out sparks before they turned into a fire.

So Keith couldn’t stop himself from stomping right up to Thace as soon as he was released from a healing pod.

“Is that how we’ve seized all our planets?” Keith demanded, a hollow anger shaking his words, because he knew the answer.

Thace sighed. “Did you think we asked nicely?”

“There was no reason to kill some unarmed family—”

“And as I understand, you didn't,” Thace said harshly. He strode down the corridor to the nearest room and waved Keith in. It was an armoury, glinting weapons on display. “You've always been under scrutiny, Keith. Sacrifices must be made if you wish to go unnoticed—”

“I don't _wish_ to have anything to do with this,” Keith said.

“ _This_?” Thace raised an eyebrow. “The Galra? Zarkon?”

“Yeah. I’ve considered my priorities and I wanna know yours. Do you want me to betray the empire or not?”

Thace grabbed his arm, painfully tight, and pulled him deeper into the room. “Keep your voice down. You think I would ask you to commit treason?”

“Why not?” Keith asked lowly. “You’ve committed it by not reporting me for visiting Lance.”

A flicker of surprise crossed his face, but it was gone in a moment. “You need to keep your feelings in check if you’re planning on doing something reckless.”

“And what are _you_ planning, Thace?” He got up in his face, impatient for answers and unafraid of backlash for once. “What’s it got to do with me?”

Thace stepped back and considered the sword rack next to them. The blades were huge and gleaming, deadly in the hands of anyone skilled enough to wield them.

“Do you believe in the power of Zarkon?” Thace asked. “In the absolute superiority of Galra?”

“No.”

His split-second response almost shocked him. Because he could still remember believing in what the Galra did. He’d spent so much time arguing over it with Lance. But before him, he’d never had to defend his position. And the more Lance had poked and prodded at his beliefs, the hollower they felt coming out of Keith’s mouth by rote.

But that hadn’t really hit him until Lance broke down, until Keith was ordered to kill civilians, just like Lance had been forced to.

And in that shack Keith had wondered, what would that make him? If he killed with nobody watching, without his own death hanging over his head. What if he did it and felt nothing? Would that make him more Galra than he’d ever been?

For the first time in his life, he didn’t want that.

He could be something else, maybe. And maybe that would be better.

Maybe he could be better.

Thace nodded grimly. “Then you know what you must do.”

Keith looked up at him. “You won’t stop me?”

What stake did Thace have in this fight? Why was he _encouraging_ Keith to turn his back on the Galra?

Thace looked around the room again, as if double-guessing it as a suitable meeting area. He nodded at the door. “Come. These are sensitive matters, but I promise everything will make sense soon.”

Keith doubted that very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then Thace explains the Blade of Marmora, which I didn't feel we needed re-explained.  
> Anyway, I hope my intentions came across clearly--Keith shouldn't be jumping ship solely based on his relationship w/ Lance. He should be changing because he realizes what the Galra are doing is wrong and wants to do stg about it. That's what this chapter was for.  
> Also for the line "You filthy furry fuck". Poetry, really. (Also if anyone was wondering, Keith understood the Sa'rase aliens bc they were speaking Galra bc, y'know, colonialism, so Wupa said the Galra version of fuck).  
> So, next chapter we're back with Lance to see how he's been dealing with Keith's absence!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, here we go! Back with Lance POV.   
> Heads up for some mean hallucinations.

Keith didn’t come back the next day. Or the next. Or the day after that.

And then Lance had another battle, with another helpless prisoner he had to kill, and the only thing that kept him from flinging himself to the robeast attacking him was Keith’s voice in his head, demanding that he keep fighting.

Keith didn’t show up after that, either.

And he _always_ came to see him after battles.

What if he’d been found out? What if he was hurt? What if he’d died? Lance would never, ever know.

He’d never know if he was fine, either. If Keith had stopped coming because the last visit had been too much. Lance had shown his true, desperately needy colours—of course Keith would realize he wasn’t worth the trouble.

Except he said he’d _come back_. Why would he lie like that?

Lance was in limbo again, nothing certain. Time passed in waves, with little differentiating one moment from the next. The freezing flash showers would jerk him out of any semblance of sleep. An alarm would blare. The nutrition bars arrived at a steady pace, but Lance had stopped counting.

He was alone, so it didn’t mean anything.  

He stared at the ceiling. He stared at the wall. He stared at the floor.

He did his exercises until he literally couldn’t lift his arms. Which was stupid. If they dragged him into battle he’d be done for.

But there was nothing else to do, except listen to music.

_I'm blue da ba dee da ba daa da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa._

He screamed for someone to turn it off. Or at least play the whole song, not just the chorus.

It took him some amount of time to realize it was in his head.

Which got him thinking, what if he’d made Keith up? What if Keith had been a figment of his imagination this whole time?

 But if that was true, then where the fuck was he? Why couldn’t his mind do him a solid and conjure Keith up again? He’d take talking to a hallucination over this endless waiting for his team that were never going to come.

Lance stretched out on the floor, head pounding, eyes pulsing with the threat of tears, but he’d shed too many to make any more.

He had no way to tell how long he’d been lying there before his mom walked in.

He jerked to a sitting position. “ _Mamá_? _Mamá_ , what are you doing here?”

Her grey-tinged braid laid over her shoulder, even whiter with the flour that got into it whenever Lance helped her bake. Her apron was covered in fresh blueberry stains and old raspberry ones.

Lance reached out, but she stayed next to the door, out of his reach.

She stuck her hands on her hips, elbows out at dangerous angles. “Where have you been?” she demanded in Spanish.

Shit, she was _pissed_ , more pissed than when he came home tipsy from that spring fling she’d grounded him from.

“ _Lo siento_ , _mamá_ ,” he said, throat tight. “I—I’m a paladin now. I have to save the universe. But I miss you, I miss you so much—”

She scowled at his cell. “A paladin? You expect me to believe that? We’ve been worried sick! Come home, Lance.”

_Home_ , he wanted to go home more than anything. But even if he escaped, Earth wouldn’t be his first stop. And his mother would still be heartbroken, disappointed in him even though all he was trying to do was protect her and everyone else on Earth.

“I’m _trying_.” His voice broke.

“It doesn’t look like it,” she said. “You’re waiting for your friends to rescue you? They’re not coming. Why would they risk themselves for you? Senseless boy.”

“No, _mamá_.” He clasped his hands to his chest, begging. “Please, I’m trying. They’re coming, please.”

In the blink of an eye, it was Shiro looming over him instead of his mother. The ragged scar across his nose was paralleled in the jagged grimace cutting his lips.

Lance hiccupped past the tears that flowed down his cheeks against all odds. “Shiro, you’re here!”

Shiro leaned down, dark eyes flat and merciless.

“I know what you did.” Lance’s blood ran cold. “You killed those prisoners. They needed your _help_. And you killed them.”

“I know.” His hands shooks. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“When I was captured, I saved them.” Shiro’s voice rang deep and accusing in his cell. “ _I_ was their Champion. How dare you claim to be a paladin?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—I didn’t w—”

“You didn’t _want_ to?” he cut in. “Since when do you do anything you don’t _want_ to, Lance? I told you to stay with Hunk on that recon mission, and what did you do?”

Lance choked on a breath. “I—I—”

“You wandered off alone to get captured,” he roared, sudden as a strike against Lance’s face. He jerked a hand at Lance kneeling on the ground. “You did this. This is _your_ fault. You deserve everything you get.”

“No, no, no,” he pleaded as Shiro turned for the door. “Don’t leave me, please, Shiro. Let me out.”

“Rot here. We don’t need you.”

Shiro disappeared and Lance sobbed so hard he almost threw up.

The next time he looked up, Keith was there.

But a Keith he didn’t know. This Keith was human; he had pale skin with bare, rounded ears, and he wore a black leather jacket and jeans.

“Keith?” Lance dragged in a deep breath. “What—why do you look like that?”

He pulled a face. “Why do _you_ look like _that_?”

Lance looked down at himself, obviously wearing the same shitty prisoner get-up he’d always had. He wiped his face off on his sleeve, cleaning off the tears and snot. “Get me out of here and I’ll try to find a tux.”

“Needy,” Keith huffed with a roll of his eyes. “But I’ll give it a shot.”

His heart skipped a beat. “Really?”

Keith peered at the hand scanner. “What is this?”

“You put your hand on it and it’ll open because you’re Galra,” Lance explained, even though Keith knew that.

He turned back to Lance, tilting his head. “Uh, I’m not Galra.”

Lance swallowed past a thick knot in his throat. “Yes, you are.”

Keith, for some reason, was just not having it. “Do I _look_ Galra?”

“No, but—”

“I think you’re losing it, buddy,” Keith laughed, just a little.

And something in Lance settled. Because Keith was here. Keith would keep him safe.

“Yeah?” Lance said. He looked up at him, so normal, so human. How had Lance ever thought any different? “So you’ve never been purple? Or had those furry ears?”

Keith crossed his arms with a scoff, but lavender was already blooming across his cheeks. His ears stretched and grew fur as black as his hair.

Keith reached up to touch one, horror stealing across his face as quick as the lavender. “What’s happening to me?”

Lance was still calm. This was just who Keith was, everything was fine.

He held out his hands. “Don’t worry.”

“Lance, help me!” Keith stared down at his hands, growing claws and tufts of fur. “Please!”

Lance reached for him. “It’s okay, come here. Come here, I’ve got you.”

Holding him would help, somehow. He knew it.

Keith’s eyes flashed yellow. He grew and grew, shoulders widening, stretching until he towered over Lance, no different than the rest of them.

“You think I need you?” Keith’s voice pitched low like a monster from Lance’s nightmares. He threw his head back and cackled.

“Keith!”

Something hit Lance’s face, startling him. A nutrition bar bounced off his nose onto the floor. The door slid closed. Keith was gone. There was no one in Lance’s room. Not Shiro, not his mom.

Nobody.

Lance curled into a ball in the corner.

_I'm blue da ba dee da ba daa da…_

 

The door swished open. Lance didn’t bother lifting his head from his arms, folded over his shirt pillow. If he didn’t acknowledge his hallucinations, would they stop coming?

“Lance.”

Lance didn’t need to look to know it was Keith. He peeked up at him anyway. Keith was the only person who kept appearing that had any reason to show up in his cell—if he was ever real to begin with.

Keith was back in his Galra uniform, with his Galra ears and Galra skin.

“You’re normal again,” Lance observed tiredly, stretched out on the floor.

So what would happen this time? Would Keith turn into a human and blame Lance for it?

“When wasn’t I?” Keith asked.

“Before.”

He looked him over, eyes heavy and smothering. “When?”

“When you looked human.” Lance brought his knees to his chest. “You looked good in that leather jacket. Very James Dean.”

“Who? I—that wasn’t me. I was on a mission” Keith dropped to his knees beside him, the closest he’d been since he cradled him in his arms. His hand hovered over Lance’s bare shoulder blade, warmth radiating from his skin as though he were really there. “I’m sorry I was gone so long. But I can make it up to you.”

Lance frowned up at him. He was being awfully nice, nicer than anybody who’d come to see him lately. “Are you real?”

The look on his face was _aching_. “As real as you are.”

Lance held out his arm, long and wiry and paler than it had ever been. He missed the sun. “Am I real?”

Keith ran a finger along his forearm, leaving goosebumps in his wake. Lance flipped his hand so Keith’s palm lingered over his.

“You feel real to me,” Keith said.

He sat up, crossing his legs underneath himself. “You sure?” he breathed.

Keith continued his gentle inspection. His callouses brushed Lance’s bare skin, his chest, his arms, his neck. He got to his jaw, tilting it from side to side like the first time he came to his cell. Lance closed his eyes, drinking in his tender touch like he was starving.

“You’re real,” Keith murmured, barely a rumble through the air. “And you’re lonely.”

Lance swallowed thickly. He nodded, right into Keith’s palm.

His violet eyes were deep and dark, like far-off galaxies in space. “I’m lonely, too,” Keith said, offering his soft, shameful secret into the dark room.

Lance shuffled forward and wound his arms around Keith’s back, dropping his face into the crook of his neck. Keith responded after a moment’s hesitation, clutching Lance to his chest like the world was ending.

_Real_ , real, Keith was real and here with him. His chest was solid against Lance’s, rising and falling steadily, bangs tickling his ear, fingers weaving through his hair.

“You don’t have to be lonely,” Lance said, voice shaking. “If you helped me escape, we could get out together. I could contact my team, you could come with us—”

Keith went rigid in his arms.

Lance clung to his sleeve. “Please—”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Keith said dully.

“I mean it.” He pulled back just far enough to cup Keith’s face. Keith was serious, always so deathly serious, and now a quiet fear hid in the downturn of his mouth, in the way his grip tightened. “You’re the only thing that’s keeping me together here. Please, that means something. You mean something to me. _Keith_.”

He was begging. Not that he’d ever been above that. He had no shame when it came to embarrassment. And he was desperate. And honest.

Keith’s voice was impossibly softer when he said, “What do I mean to you?”

Lance wasn’t strong like Shiro. He hadn’t been here anywhere near a year yet, but he’d have lost it already if he didn’t have Keith.

And he _knew_ the relationship was unbalanced. He knew Keith had all the power. But that didn’t stop Keith from coming nearly every day, listening to him, talking to him, holding him while he fell apart.

And outside the cell, maybe that was nothing, but he wasn’t outside his cell. He was on a Galra prison ship. And he knew it was pathetic that his heart lifted just at the sight of Keith but—Keith kept coming back. That was something, wasn’t it?

“Hope,” Lance said. “I see you, and I feel a little less hopeless. Because you _exist_. Because I know someone still cares about what happens to me.”

Keith’s forehead creased. “Your friends are coming, Lance.”

His belief in his team wavered in and out. And if— _when_ —they came for him, he knew he’d be drowned in guilt for ever doubting them, but for now they weren’t _here_.

But Keith was.

“And you’re coming with me when they do. You don’t deserve to be here,” Lance said. “You don’t belong here. You’re lonely because you know you’re more than this.”

Keith gently tugged Lance’s hands off his face until they rested in his lap.

“Do you believe that because it’s true, or because you _need_ it to be true?” Keith asked. “Because I’m done with blind conviction when there’s no other option.”

“What do you believe?” Lance countered. “Do you think you deserve to be raised for the slaughter in Zarkon’s name?”

Keith was silent a long moment, drinking Lance in, still desperately trying to figure him out. “I think you won’t want anything to do with me when you’re out of here. And that’ll be more than justified.”

“No. No!” Lance said as Keith tried to stand. He yanked him back down. “Humans get redemption, Keith. That’s a thing. You can change. You can do good things and be good.”

Keith pressed his forehead to his, thick hair matting to Lance’s skin.

“I’ll get you out of here.” Keith’s breath washed over his face, a steady in-out that Lance sought to replicate. Keith’s eyes were still open, blurry so close but undeniably intent as Lance closed his, focusing on the proximity. “Because you deserve it. And because Voltron may be the only force with half a chance of defeating us. And they need you.”

“I need you,” fell from Lance’s lips, tugging on Keith's hands as he tried to stand again.

Keith looked at him, fingers still caught in Lance’s. “I need to go.”

An alarm wailed from outside the room. There’d been other alarms, and every time Lance’s chest ballooned with hope, only to slowly deflate when his door remained solidly locked, when no shouting or desperate knocking came from the other side.

Lance didn’t want to be alone for that again. “Keith—”

“I’ll get you out, but I don’t know—”

“If it’s them, if it’s my team, tell them you’re with me, okay? Tell them they can trust you. Tell them—” He wracked his brain thinking of what would convince his friends to trust Keith. “Tell them you’re ride or die.”

His brows rose. He almost smiled; sharp canines glinted in the low light. “Really?”

Lance nodded fervently.

The alarm blared louder.

Keith’s maybe-smile disappeared, features falling back into familiar worry. “You can pull it together, right? I’m gonna need you to be a paladin out there.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

He squeezed his hands one last time. “I’ll see you soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, some things:   
> Thing 1) next chapter is POV of someone from team Voltron! Bet you can't guess who!! Also it's pretty short, so I'll probs post it Wednesday as like a mid-week treat (?) and then post as usual on the weekend.   
> Thing 2) the ""epilogue"" is 15k rn so it's gonna be a separate work. This will still have 15 chaps, and the follow up will have like 5? And get posted a few weeks after this finishes up.  
> Thing 3) Fun fact: that scene with Keith was the first thing I wrote for this fic, just to test out the idea and see if I liked it. I guess I did, lol.  
> Thanks for reading, lemme know what you thought!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your feedback! I know, Lance is having a horrible time right now, but he'll be safe and sound soon.  
> Now, I promised you a POV from team Voltron, to see what the HECK they've been up to all this time. You guys made some good guesses, but nobody picked right.  
> So without further ado, I present... Blue POV.

In the castle’s hangar, Blue sat next to Red, two lions without their paladins.

She used to relay adventures with her paladin to Red, sending her all the joy and freedom that coursed through her system when she flew with Lance.

The team had presented plenty of potential candidates to Red. Blue had begged her to pick one, and be as happy as the rest of the lions. Any number of the candidates would’ve made a fine paladin. At least for the time being. Long enough to form Voltron, to rid the universe of the most pressing threats.

But Red had never so much as looked in their direction.

And now Blue understood how Red could stand idly by while the paladins tried so hard to save the universe.

Red’s true paladin was out there somewhere, and she would accept no substitutes until they were found.

 

Not long after Lance’s disappearance, the princess requested to pilot Blue, just until they got him back. Blue knew it was a reasonable proposal, but the thought of taking to the skies with anyone but her bright boy, with his shining grin and heavy heart, welded her jaw shut.

She could still feel his life force pulsing out beyond the stars, so she refused to lick her wounds and move on like she’d done so many times before.

The remaining paladins just needed to get him back to her, and this tension weighing her down would disappear.

 

The team knew where he was, but they were low on everything: paladins, resources, allies.

Their plan was convoluted to Blue, who wanted nothing more than to dive straight in and bring him home.

But there were a lot of Galra on the prison ship, and they had a lot of guns—that’s what the yellow paladin said. He sat with her often. It reminded her of her own paladin, coming to her when he couldn’t sleep, so she let him.

“We met with the rebels on Sa’rase,” the yellow paladin said one day. “They’re going with our plan—they’re gonna stage coordinated attacks with nearby planets. All we need to do is get them weapons. And Shiro and Allura are going over strategy with them.”

So they’d have half a chance against the indomitable force of the Galra, Blue presumed.

“Since the prison ship has so many soldiers, there aren’t many posted full-time on planets in this quadrant. So we’re planning on most of them getting sent down when all the planets rise up. I don’t know how we’re gonna pull this off if they don’t,” he added in a mutter.

The larger boy talked to her like she was Lance, like he’d be able to hear him through her. Like she would console him like her paladin did.

“We’re asking these rebels to risk their lives as a distraction,” he whispered. “But they’re ready to do it. The Galra have taken _everything_ from them, and we’re the only thing that might be able to stop this war.” He inhaled, deep, deep, deep. “Blue, you gotta let Allura pilot you. We’re barely scraping by here.”

But Blue found herself detached from the drama. Impatient and worried.

She would accept no substitutes.

 

The green paladin visited a few times, crawling around in Blue with some inexplicable mission. She’d allowed it until the paladin started tinkering with her insides. Then she spat the girl out and hadn’t let her back in since.

The black paladin spent nearly every second of his downtime with his lion, desperate to strengthen his bond so they would be strong enough to defeat their enemies and rescue Lance.

Both he and the older, moustached Altean took responsibility for his capture. The black paladin may be the leader, but the Altean was the oldest out of everyone but the lions.

The crew begged the moustached Altean for answers, for explanations and solutions. But he didn’t have them this time, no brilliant ideas to get Lance back to them any sooner.

So he asked Blue, futilely, what to do.

She had no answers. Only demands: Find her paladin. Stop offering replacements.

Her patience was infinite; she’d wait as long as it took to get Lance back—until she could feel him blink out of existence like a dying star. That hadn’t happened yet, and she had to believe it _wouldn’t_.

 

Blue waited next to Red, stoic and longing and silent, and drew strength from her. Blue had waited a thousand years for her perfect paladin, with his boisterous laugh and endless compassion. She could wait a while longer.

Eventually, she didn’t have to.

The princess approached Blue, followed by the rest of the crew.

“We’re ready to launch our rescue,” she said, bowing her head in deference. “I know I am not your paladin, but I humbly beg that you allow me to pilot you until we have him back to us safely—”

The black paladin laid a hand on her arm. “Princess.”

She lifted her head, eyes glittering with relief when she saw Blue bowed down, jaw open for a pilot.

Blue felt the princess’ honest emotion reflected in herself.

They were getting her paladin.

Her blue boy was coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How was that? I've never read from a lion's POV before, so I hope this is new and exciting for all of you, too.   
> Initially I was just gonna hand wave Voltron taking so long with them "preparing" or whatever, but you guys kept asking what they were doing, so I figured I'd better think up a real explanation lol.  
> Anyway, let me know what you thought! Back to Lance POV sometime this weekend. See you then!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad everybody liked Blue's POV! I didn't mean to make anybody cry with that chap but apparently I did anyway?? I guess I have the magic touch lmao.  
> So here we go!!! Prison break!!! The beginning of it, anyway.  
> Heads up for some violence.

Lance got to his knees when the door hissed open, a thick knob of hope lodged in his throat. It nearly choked him when two Galra guards glared down at him instead of Keith.

“What—what’s going on?” Lance asked over the ringing alarm.

Warning lights flashed in the corridor, a constant reminder that a fight was incoming. They couldn’t be bringing him to another battle right now, could they?

“Prisoner transfer,” one Galra grunted. His hair was shiny as an oil slick. Lance almost asked him where he got his product, but then decided just the one question was probably pushing it.

The other Galra tapped at his holo-tablet. “Rise.”

Lance did so, cuffs adjusted to allow him a limited range of motion, hands now pinned to his side.

The guards shoved their burly hands around his elbows and hauled him out of the room.

Lance blinked hard against the flashing lights, heart thudding in his throat. “Is now the best time for this?”  

Where was Keith? His touch had felt so real, left shivering trails on his skin. He had to be real, right? He came back for him? And he was going to help him escape? He had to be.

“You need a more secure cell for what’s coming,” Slick said.

“What’s—is _Voltron_ here?” Lance’s voice cracked. He jumped as high as he could in their hold, as though he could stretch his neck far enough to see multi-coloured lions swooping through stars.

But there were no windows in this corridor, just a tin can sealed tight.

The other Galra, Tiny Ears, grunted an affirmation. “Can’t wait to see you all fight it out in the arena after we capture them.”

Lance shook his head. “In your dreams, man. I’m getting out of here. I’m getting out. I’m getting—”

Slick jostled him. “You’re _getting_ into a top-security prison cell. No way you’re—”

A boom crashed, rocking the floor beneath them.

“Fuck you, man, fuck you,” Lance laughed, jumping, feet pumping through the air because he couldn’t fist pump.

The guards sped up, practically dragging Lance down the hall. The alarms howled, warning lights flared. Lance’s head pounded but he couldn’t stop smiling.

“Hurry up so we can get to the battle,” Tiny Ears said.

“I am hurrying,” Slick grunted. “ _You_ hurry.”

They swung him around a corner, nearly bashing Lance into a rushing figure.

Keith.

Lance had to restrain himself from lunging forward.

Keith didn’t look half as relieved. His gaze flicked between the three of them, squeezing his sword hilt anxiously.

Lance stilled, trying to play it cool.

“What are you doing?” Keith asked.

 “Prisoner transfer.” They tried to shove past him.

“I’m supposed to be transferring him,” Keith argued, backing up his bold act of bravado by pulling his shoulders back and lifting his chin.

Tiny Ears frowned, sharing a look with Slick. “Just you? On whose orders?”

“Thace. Yours?”

“Lotor.”

There was a pause while the guards weighed their options and Keith took stock of their weapons, safely holstered at the moment.

Then another crash sounded.

“Fine.” Slick shoved Lance at Keith. “I’m sure even _you_ can handle one measly prisoner.”

Lance was careful not to lean too heavily into Keith, not look too delighted by this turn of events. He was close enough to smell Keith, salty sweat and something like gun powder.

Keith held out the hand that wasn’t gripping Lance’s elbow. “Tablet.”

Tiny Ears handed it over without a second thought. The two took off down another corridor, leaving Keith and Lance moving at a steady pace in the direction Keith had come.

Once the guards were out of sight, Keith chanced a glance at Lance. “Are you alright?”

“Are they here?” Lance asked, bypassing his concern. “Are they really here? Voltron?”

Keith nodded, poking at the tablet. “Their arrival should provide adequate distraction to get you into an escape pod.”

“You’re coming with—hey!” The cuffs dragged Lance back to the floor.

“Sorry!” Keith said, tapping away. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Loving the confidence.”

“Quiet,” he bit out, looking around furtively. He booped the tablet one last time. “There.”

The cuffs disappeared. For the first time in months, Lance’s wrists and ankles were free with nothing holding him back.

Keith watched closely as Lance stood, the tiniest scowl pulling at his lips when he ended up just _barely_ looking up at Lance.

Lance slipped his hand into Keith’s. “Where’re we going?”

Keith’s fingers flexed against his palm. He nodded ahead. “This way.”

Lance’s legs were a little wobbly from disuse and jittery excitement, but that didn’t slow him down. This could be it—this _had_ to be it, he was getting home today.

He longed for a window. He’d missed staring into space for hours on end. He’d missed the freedom of soaring through the skies with Blue.

He picked up his pace.

“I can’t wait to fly you around in Blue, Keith,” he said. “You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the stars through the eyes of a giant robotic space cat, you just haven’t.”

“Then I guess I’m not gonna live,” he muttered dryly.

“Keith, you’re coming with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Whuh—yes you can. You’re coming with me.” He slowed, just a little bit. “Aren’t—aren’t you?"

His voice dropped with his confidence, along with his heart to his feet.

Keith pressed his lips together, not meeting his eye. “I can do important stuff here.”

He ripped his hand from Keith’s, outrage flaring in his chest. “Like _what_? Like destroy planets in the name of Zarkon, who you don’t even think exists? And watch innocent prisoners die and—and—” His voice was getting squeaky with incredulity. “And sit around like an outcast for the rest of your life?”

Because _how_? How could Keith pick the Galra over Lance? How could he stand by and—not even stand by, but be _complicit_? Follow their orders, do what they say, just fall in line?

“I would be just as much of an outcast with you,” Keith said lowly.

“Yeah, but you’d be with _me_!”

Wasn’t that what Keith wanted? Why he’d visited Lance again and again? Why he’d made Lance promise not to give up in the battle arena?

A heavy silence pulled tight between them.

Tears stung Lance’s eyes. How had he misread the situation so badly?

“What’s going on here?” A burly guard appeared at the end of the hall, his partner trailing behind him.

Lance immediately dropped his gaze, trying to look more downtrodden than confrontational. It wasn't hard.

“Prisoner transfer,” Keith said.

The guard lifted a furry eyebrow. “On your own?”

His partner scoffed. “Looks like he’s putting up a fight.”

Keith switched the gentle hold he had on Lance’s hand to his wrist, and before Lance react, Keith had him shoved up against the wall. “I’ve got him.”

But not in the way he was tricking the guards into thinking, Lance convinced himself.

Keith had his back. Keith was on his side. Lance was pretty damn sure of that at this point, but being pinned against the wall like this, arms twisted and held against his spine, was not a reassuring situation after being locked up so long.

Especially after Keith had insisted on staying on this ship. 

But before Lance’s breath got away from him, Keith brushed his thumb over Lance’s rapidly beating pulse point. It brought him back to himself, got him to notice that Keith’s touch was soft despite how harsh the hold looked.

_It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay_ , a rhythm beat against his skull.

The first guard frowned. “I thought Hark was on transfer duty.”

The other guard nodded, narrowing his eyes at Keith. “And I thought Haggar forbade—”

Keith’s grip on Lance tightened for half a second before letting go completely.

There was a whir of action, a grunt, and then, “Lance!”

Lance spun from the wall just in time to catch the blaster Keith threw at him. The guard Keith was taking out had an empty holster and a sharp grimace. The other guard’s blaster was already trained on Keith.

Lance shot him in the head without a moment’s hesitation.

The two guards slumped to the ground in unison.

Lance gaped. It was instinct, to go for the kill with Galra, but he still felt bad for downing one right in front of Keith.

But Keith had known what he was getting into, right? Getting Lance out of there? He wasn’t regretting turning his back on his people?

“Shit, I didn’t mean—”

“Victory or death,” Keith cut him off. His mouth was pulled in a tight line, breathing even. He turned to face him “They chose death.”

Lance paused, but not because of Keith’s conviction. That was expected. What wasn’t was, “Your eyes…?”

Keith blinked, hard, banishing the bright yellow glow. “Yeah, it—it happens sometimes.”

Lance was still digesting that when a squad of Galra passed the end of the hall, thankfully not looking their way. He heard them muttering something that sounded awfully like—

“Zarkon?” Keith’s face drained of colour. He swore, grabbing the spare blaster from the downed guard. He shot out a vent grate near the ceiling. “You gotta go.”

And Lance, for one, was pretty sure that Zarkon _did_ exist and would kill him if he got the chance, so he saved any pithy quips about Keith being scared of Zarkon’s clone to himself.

Plus, watching _Die Hard_ every Christmas with his family made him really excited to crawl through air vents, so he didn’t argue.

He stepped into Keith’s laced fingers and got thrown upwards with a surprising amount of force. Lance tossed his blaster into the vent and grabbed the ledge before pulling himself up.

There was just enough room in the vent to spin back around and hold out a hand for Keith. Who wasn’t looking at him.

“ _Keith_!” Lotor’s voice thundered down the hall.

Keith swiped his sword off the ground before looking up at Lance with wide eyes. “Take a left, right, your second left, third right, a left then straight until the end.”

“No, no, no—” Lance’s fingers brushed Keith’s scalp as he spun to face Lotor.

Lotor stalked down the hall, cape snapping at his heels with a barely-restrained fury. “I’ve waited too long for this—”

Lance shot at him. The lasers glanced off Lotor’s sword, easily blocking them. He didn’t slow down one bit.

“Get out of here!” Keith tossed a glance at Lance, eyes flashing golden as he lifted his sword.

His ears laid flat against his hair, body taut and ready to throw himself at Lotor, who was so huge compared to Keith.

Lotor grinned, reckless and wild, stretching his thick scar across his cheek. “You’ve betrayed the Galra. You know what happens now.”

Keith slid forward, aquiline and quick, and ducked under Lotor’s elbow for a hit to his side, rolling away and coming back with a strike to the knees.

Lotor deflected, then launched his own series of attacks that Keith kept pace with without much trouble.

 He’d been trained by the Galra. He knew their tricks, he fought just like them—ruthless and relentless—but he used his smaller size to his advantage, streaking around Lotor in a blur.

Which was great, except that it made it stupidly difficult for Lance to get a clear shot at Lotor.

“Go!” Keith yelled again as Lotor knocked him off his feet.

Lotor chuckled, looming over Keith. “You think I care about him? No, no, Keith. This is about me and you!”

He booted him in the stomach.

Keith latched onto his leg, so as Lotor drew his foot back, lightning-quick, Keith let go and ended up behind him. Keith knocked the back of his knee.

Lotor buckled.

The ship rocked, sending Lance rolling down the vent.

“Go, Lance!” Keith yelled. “Voltron needs you.”

Lotor laughed again, low and dark. “ _Voltron_. They’ll never last.”

“Yeah, your father’s never lost a fight, has he? _You_ on the other hand—”

There was a pained grunt that Lance convinced himself was Lotor’s as he crawled down the cramped vent, stomach clenching with guilt.

He’d come back. With his whole team. And they’d all take on Lotor and spirit Keith away, whether he liked it or not.

Yeah.

But would his friends trust a Galra? Would they put their lives at risk to save one?

Lance paused as he came to his first fork in the path. He thought he caught Hunk’s voice carried through the vents, but he thought he’d heard Hunk a lot lately, so that didn’t mean anything.

He could _taste_ how close he was to reuniting with his team. Felt it in his gut, how soon he’d get his freedom. Riding out of there on Blue and never looking back.

And his friends would want the same. They wouldn’t want to dive back into the wolf’s den to save a _wolf_.

So Lance scuttled back the way he came.

 The sound of his heavy breathing was only interrupted by his elbows and knees clanging off the metal around him, until he got close enough to hear Lotor’s smooth voice.

His taunting echoed weirdly through the vent. Stuff about Keith being weak, how he’d always been weak, blah blah blah, typical bullshit villain stuff.

Then he said something worth Lance’s attention.

“Your mother should’ve left you on that backwater planet with the rest of the weaklings.”

“My mother?” Keith repeated after a moment, like it was one of the many foreign concepts Lance had explained to him.

There was a groan and a thump and Lance sped up.

“She tried to get rid of you, obviously. A useless halfling who couldn’t even walk when he was born. What was anybody supposed to do with you?” Lotor scoffed. “But Haggar seized you for her experiments. We should’ve thrown you in the ring like the rest of them!”

A clash of blades sounded as Lance slid the final distance to the wall opening, fumbling with his blaster.

Both Keith and Lotor were sweating as they fought, eyes glowing yellow and teeth bared.

“Haggar wanted you to morph between forms, but your stupid eye shifting was all you amounted to. I’ve never understood why you weren’t killed like any other failure.”

Lotor kicked Keith in the chest.

Keith flew into the wall. He slid to the floor, eyelids fluttering, sword slack in his grip.

“Now I can remedy that mistake.” Lotor loomed over Keith, a foot on his chest pinning him down.

He lifted his sword.

Lance didn’t take the time to aim. He shot him in the spine, the thigh, the arm as Lotor turned, features twisting as he took in Lance’s return.

“And _this_ ,” Lotor hissed, stomping over to him.

Lance took a shot, but Lotor deflected with his sword and grabbed Lance’s arm with his free hand.

He jerked Lance out of the vent, tossing him to the ground with little to no regard for the fragile state of human necks. Lance’s blaster skidded across the floor.

Lance raised his arm on instinct, but no shield bloomed to protect him from the blade hanging over his head.

“ _This_ is who you finally betray the Galra for,” Lotor spat at Keith. “Some halfwit as useless as you are.”

“Don’t touch him,” Keith growled, back on his feet like he’d never been down. His breathing was heavy, lips pulled back to reveal sharp teeth, bangs plastered to his violet skin with sweat.

He was fucking furious.

Lance laughed breathlessly when Lotor’s nails dug into his chin, a cruel mockery of every time Keith had cupped his face.

“Only an imbecile greets death with a smile, human.”

And that only made him laugh harder, because Keith was going tear him apart for daring to lay a hand on Lance.

“Lotor!” Another Galra appeared at the end of the hall. Broad shoulders, pointed ears, a little goatee framing his chin. “What are you doing in this sector? Your father ordered you—”

Lotor shoved Lance away, rising to his full height.

“Does it look like I care—” He cut off his indignant roar, maybe realizing that announcing he didn’t give a shit about the ruler of the universe’s demands was a Bad Idea. He switched gears. “Thace. I found Keith helping the paladin escape. I’m dealing with it.”

Thace lifted his sword. “I’ll handle them. Return to your post.”

Lotor yanked Keith forward, tossing him to the newcomer’s feet.

Lance raised his blaster, but all Lotor did was point at Keith, lip curling as he said to Thace, “Lock him up. I will see the end of him.”

Thace’s face remained impassive. “Of course, Lotor.”

After one last glare at the back of Keith’s head, Lotor stomped off, steam pouring out of his ears.

Once he was out of sight, Keith stood. This Thace guy didn’t immediately cuff him, but Lance stayed kneeling, turning his aim on him just in case.

“I had him,” Keith grumbled.

Thace’s brows lowered. “Did you really?”

“I believe you, man,” Lance said.

He should probably keep quiet in the presence of a stranger, but when had he ever been quiet?

Keith looked at him, rolling his eyes, returned to violet. He helped Lance to his feet and kept a hand on his hip as he said, “This is Thace. He’s on our side, just—just trust me.”

Oh, right. Thace. The one Galra Keith didn’t talk about with clear derision. So Lance didn’t ask any more questions they really didn’t have time for.

After all, what was all this, if not a giant, winding trust exercise?

Lance looked him over once before nodding. “Fine.”

Thace regarded him with a new interest, just as thoughtful as Keith always was. He seemed to find what he was looking for quickly, however. He turned back to Keith, pointing at the two bodies on the ground. “Did we not discuss subtlety, Keith?”

“We discussed it,” he agreed. “Hard to manage when the whole ship’s under attack, though.”

Thace bit back a sigh. “This limits your options. But you—” He held a small duffel bag out to Lance. “It is time for you to go, young paladin.”  

Lance cautiously took the bag, opening it to find a familiar suit. “Holy shit.”

Yup, okay. Whatever this Thace guy was up to, he was a-okay in Lance’s book.

He dropped the bag and immediately ripped off his paper-thin prisoner shift.

“Lance, what the hell—”

“You might have to help me with the straps,” he said to Keith, tugging his blue chest armour over his head.

“Zarkon is here for Voltron,” Thace said impatiently, like he really didn’t think Lance should be changing right now. But if there was going to be a fight, Lance was sure as hell going to be protected for it. “He plans to take all four lions out of the sky—”

Lance’s stomach did a loop-de-loop. “Four? Four lions, you sure about that?”

“Yes—keep dressing, if you insist on doing so.”

Lance got going on the straps. After a moment, Keith hesitantly came forward to assist.

He tried not to sway into his warmth, a comforting presence as he grappled with the knowledge that there were four pilots for four lions.

It was good, he knew it was good. More fire power meant an easier fight. But—who was the fourth? Had they found the red paladin? Or had they replaced Lance? Had Blue moved on?

Did they know what he’d done in the arena? Were they here just to scorn him and move on?

“Lance,” Keith said, bringing him back to the present.

Right. They had work to do. Lance, for one, had to get some pants on. 

He awkwardly tugged his armour pants over his weird prisoner leggings. While they still had some time, he said to Thace, “So is Keith’s mom still around?”

Thace and Keith both looked startled by the question.

“Do you know what happened with that?” Lance checked. “You look old.”

“There isn’t time—” Thace began.

“Thace, I’m _leaving_. Just tell me,” Keith said, gaze questioning and more than a little hesitant. “Please.”

Thace sighed. “Your mother and I were once close companions. You… you remind me of her.”

Keith kind of looked like he’d been hit in the face by a frying pan.

“You knew her,” he said dully. “But she’s dead now?”

“She left the Galra as well as the Blade after you were apprehended. I convinced Haggar to spare your life as an infant, but I’ve had no contact with her since she left, so she doesn’t know what’s become of you. Nor I her.”

Keith nodded, opening his mouth a few times with nothing coming out.

Lance guessed his question. “What about his dad?”

Thace looked at Lance as he slipped into his boots. He was dressed now, ready to go, but he didn’t dare interrupt the moment.

“All I know is that he was from Earth,” Thace said.

The second metaphorical frying pan to Keith’s face was heavier and bigger. “I’m—I’m human?”

This was it. Keith’s confirmation of something Lance had guessed from the start. A concrete reason to explain why he’d felt so misplaced his whole life.

Not a _great_ realization to react to in the middle of a prison break, but he didn't really get a choice.

“You never told me. You—you said it wouldn’t matter.” A breath rattled out of Keith. “It _matters_.”

“The truth would only have burdened you,” Thace said evenly. “I’m sure of that.”

Keith dragged a hand through his hair. It was weird, seeing him go from a fierce warrior to just a teenager with his whole world flipped on its axis in the span of five minutes.

Thace cleared his throat. “Keith, take advantage of the distraction that Voltron’s arrival has provided. Go now.”

Lance swiped his helmet off the floor before grabbing Keith’s hand. “You can process this later, okay? We gotta get out of here.”

This place wasn't home for either of them.

Keith slowly turned to meet his gaze. “You were right. This whole time.”

“Yeah. So you can imagine my surprise.”

He blinked, and then let out a huff of laughter.

Lance grinned at him, nodding at the vent. “Let’s skip any more interruptions, huh?”

Keith nodded, refocusing on the task at hand. He boosted Lance back into the vent, where they wouldn’t run into any more guards. But he didn’t join him immediately.

“I’ve been compromised, Thace,” Keith said. “I can’t stay here. What do I—?”

“You have the coordinates,” Thace said calmly. “You also have a choice. Your life will be full of choices from now on, but I believe you’ll make many of the right ones. Now, please. Leave while you still can.”

Then Keith was in the vent with Lance, and they were off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :))) So! Now we know why Keith is there! I hope that answers your questions. If not, ask away and I'll make something up I guess lol.  
> Also, side note, I've never actually seen Die Hard, but Jake Peralta from Brooklyn 99 loves it, and if it's good enough for Jake, it's good enough for Lance.  
> Okay, soooo I did not plan the posting of this v well, because, following my current posting schedule, the next chap would go up right after season 3 premieres??? And I feel like that may steal some of my thunder. So I might wait a week and a half (like next Wednesday?) to post the next chap? Or... I could post this Thursday, before s3?  
> Idk, what do you guys think? Lemme know, and lemme know how you liked this chapter!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so a lot of you said sooner so !!! this is definitely sooner lol. Um, I just got a job and I'm starting next week, and I reaaally wanna have this all posted before then, because I feel like I'm gonna be too tired to deal with this, so I'm gonna fast-track editing the last few chapters to get it all out there. And you guys said the premiere wouldn't distract you much so?? #yolo  
> Also, shout out to my [friend](http://jemmkdra.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing like the last half of the fic, she's been a big help.  
> Heads up for some violence.  
> HOO BOY. HERE WE GO.

Decked out in his paladin uniform, with his bayard on his hip, Lance could almost convince himself that this was just the tail end of a normal mission. That he’d gotten separated from his team for a little bit, but he was on his way back and everything was fine now.

Except he had Keith at his back, quietly telling him where to make his turns. That was new and different. So were the shadows he swore passed up ahead but Keith insisted weren’t there. Plus, navigating the dark, cramped space of a vent wasn’t nearly as much fun as Bruce Willis made it look.

Keith tapped his left leg. “Turn here.”

Lance took a deep breath and turned, ignoring Shiro’s voice calling him in the other direction. Keith didn’t say anything about it, so it wasn’t real, right? Right?

“I didn’t see or hear anything,” Keith said before Lance could ask for the third time. “And nothing more dangerous than a rat can get around up here, anyway. Nothing we can’t handle. So keep moving.”

Lance obeyed, trying not to worry about getting into a combat situation and getting distracted by something that wasn’t there.

His helmet clanked against the vent for the millionth time, the metallicy thud echoing down the vent. “Keith—”

“Lance, can you contact your team with that helmet?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“So why don’t you put it _on_?” Keith asked. “And you can ask them if anybody is on the ship shouting for you.”

But Lance hesitated, just like he’d hesitated in the corridor when he’d finished dressing. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

“Don’t you wanna let them know you’re on your way out of here?” he prodded.

“That would be helpful, huh?”

“It would.” When Lance continued shuffling forward, Keith said, “ _Lance_.”

“I’m working up to it, okay? Let me live.”

Keith was silent for a few moments as they crawled. Then he said, softer than before, “Have they… Do you expect them to be angry? For you getting captured? Will they punish you?”

“What?” He shook his head. “ _No_ , no. No way.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Lance groaned. “I know, it’s stupid—”

“I don’t know if it’s stupid, because you won’t tell me.”

“What’s the choice you have to make?” Lance cut in to distract him. And because he was dying to know. He was dying to know about how Keith felt about being human too, but that topic seemed really distracting and they both needed to focus.

Keith didn’t answer for so long that Lance gave up on expecting a response.

Then he said, “There’s a resistance within the Galra. The Blade of Marmora. I can join them. Or…”

“Join me,” Lance said. An insistence? A plea?

“Yes, that’s the choice,” was all Keith said.

Lance bit down on his argument, because what kind of choice was that for Keith? Go off with some more Galra he didn’t know and would feel just as out of place with? Or come with Lance and… yeah, Keith might be out of place, but he wouldn’t be alone. He wouldn’t be _lonely_.

Even if Thace ended up returning to the Blade after this, what help would he be? He’d kept Keith’s true identity a secret instead of giving Keith the one piece of information that would make him feel less alone. Like, he’d also saved Keith’s life multiple times, but that didn’t feel like enough to Lance. Keith deserved… more.

“So why won’t you put on your helmet?” Keith asked.

Lance sighed, but Keith had answered his question. Now it was his turn.

“There are four lions out there,” Lance said. “What if they replaced me? And they showed up because they felt sorry for me, but they’ve already got a blue paladin? What do I do? What—what’ll be my point? I’ll be pointless.”

“You are not—”

“And what about when I tell them about the battle arena?” His voice was small. “What are they gonna think of me?”

“They’re gonna be grateful you’re alive,” Keith said without a shred of doubt. “It’s not like you’d have done it if you had the choice.”

“I did have a choice, though.”

He grabbed Lance’s ankle, probably because the rest of him was out of reach. “Kill or be killed is not a choice, Lance. That’s why Lotor has the prisoners fight each other, so he can watch and laugh at the distress he’s wreaking. Your friends aren’t gonna blame you; they’ll blame _him_. They’ll blame the Galra. Because it’s not your fault. Now contact your team. They miss you.”

Lance swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat.

“You don’t even know them,” he muttered.

“I know you,” Keith said, just as softly. “Now keep moving.”

Lance slid his helmet on, feeling a comforting tightness where he once complained that it pinched his ears, and that the recycled air was bad for his skin.

He continued forward, only silence reaching him until he heard a _click_.

“You alright?” Shiro’s voice came in.

“A-okay,” Hunk replied. “Thanks for the save.”

“Everybody else doing okay?” Shiro asked.

“I—oh, Quiznak,” Allura swore. There was some grunting and clacking and more swearing. “Blue’s fighting for control.”

A breath shuddered out of Lance. Oh, it was Allura. Allura was piloting Blue. That was—that better than a totally new paladin. She’d give Blue back to him, right? Unless Blue liked her better than him.

“Don’t worry,” Shiro said soothingly. “We know where she’s going.”

Or maybe Blue missed him just as much as he missed her.

Lance blinked the mistiness in his eyes away before he spoke. “What’s your position, Allura?”

“Starboard side, trying to take out—” She stopped.

There was a long silence.

A wicked grin tore across his face. “What _fuck_ is up, my dudes?”

He couldn’t see Keith roll his eyes, but he heard him grumbling before the team drowned him out.

“ _Lance_?” Hunk shouted loud enough to burst an eardrum.

“Lance!” Coran yelped, followed by a startled thump.

“Lance?” Pidge said. “Where are you?”

“Are you okay?” Shiro asked, voice heavy with implication.

“I’m fine, I’m totally fine.” Well, he had all his original appendages, at least. “And I’m in a vent.”

“Which one?” Pidge asked.

Lance tossed a glance over his shoulder. “Keith?”

“Sector 2A, heading to Hanger 12.”

“Shit, I’m in Sector 5,” Pidge said. “How are you not locked up?”

Lance ground to a halt. “You’re on the _ship_?”

“Yeah, I’m staging a bold rescue mission! Who the fuck is Keith?”

Shiro protested half-heartedly, but apparently his curiosity won out over his urge to scold, because he left the line open for Lance to respond.

“Uh… My—my buddy,” Lance settled on. “Hey, buddy, where’re the other prisoners?”

“Sector 6B,” Keith said, tapping the back of Lance’s foot to get him moving again. He was so _impatient_ , like they were in a rush to escape from a high-security prison or something.

“Do you need help, Pidge?” Lance asked.

“No, I’m on it! Just get out of here.”

Lance nodded and kept going. Nobody immediately demanded more information because they were busy fighting, but the tension of the inevitable conversation held his muscles tight.

So he was almost glad when Hunk cut back in with, “So uh, is Keith another prisoner?”

Lance still didn’t know what to say, though. He let a silence stretch. Eventually he hedged, “In a manner of speaking…”

Keith let out an argumentative grunt. “In _which_ manner?”

Lance sighed. “Okay, so, funny story, I was in isolation, so Keith is Galra. Only half, though! He’s half human. Cool, right?” He gulped. “So we’re taking him with us.”

A chorus of uncertain groans greeted him, along with one quick, sharp, “Absolutely not,” from Allura.

“Wasn’t asking permission,” Lance said, airy enough that it almost took the bite out of his words.

“Lance, I’m not staying with you,” Keith said lowly. “I’m just helping you get out safely.”

“And then _what_?” He twisted his body the best he could to glare at Keith, whose eyes were glowing golden in the dark.

Keith dropped his gaze. “Exit’s straight ahead,” he said instead of anything comforting.

Lance spent another moment looking at him, but when all Keith did was tap impatiently against the floor, he turned back around.

Keith had said it himself; he couldn’t _stay_ here. So at the very least they were leaving together. There was still time to change his mind.

Lance reached the vent cover a few feet ahead and peeked through the slats. The hangar was big, obviously, high-ceilinged with lots of room for ships of all different sizes. Most of them were still grounded—only a few of the larger ones missing, if the gaping spaces on the floor were any indication.

“Not too busy,” Lance whispered. “That’s lucky.”

Keith crawled forward for a better look, squishing Lance against the wall.

“That’s _weird_ ,” he corrected. He squinted into the hangar before realization spilled across his features. “Of course. More than half the crew got sent down to deal with rebels. That’s where I was before I got stabbed.”

“Good, it’s working,” Hunk said, relieved, through the comms.

“You got _stabbed_?” Lance said. Then, “Wait, _what’s_ working?”

Allura cut in. “What’s your position?”

“In the vent above Hangar 12,” Lance said.

A short pause passed, which would’ve been filled with one of her _looks_ if they’d been in person. “And when will you be _in_ Hangar 12?”

Keith lifted his brows at Lance before slashing through the vent cover.

“Soon,” Lance assured Allura.

Keith rolled out and Lance followed, decidedly less graceful than Keith, who had the reflexes of a cat, apparently. They ducked behind a stack of crates for cover. Their luck held out, because the guards hurrying through the rows of speeders and ships seemed to have more important things to do than look their way.

“If you can open bay door,” Allura said, “I can get you out of there in five ticks.”

“On it,” Keith said, hopping to his feet before Lance could stop him so they could form any sort of real plan.

Keith made a beeline for the control panel next to the doors connecting the hangar to the rest of the ship.

As fast as he was, the guards still caught sight of him. Lance had his bayard off his belt in a second, grinning as it grew into his blaster gun, molding perfectly into his hands. He took a knee and picked off the guards going after Keith.

Five ticks, Allura had said. Not long. Long enough to get shot, but that wasn’t an option, not when they were so close to getting out. And Lance was an excellent shot.

Keith poked around at the control panel before sending the bay door shooting up. An invisible barrier prevented everything in the room from shooting into the void, but Lance watched a Galra on a small speeder shoot out easily, a clear helmet ballooning from his space suit as he passed through it into space.

And then Blue swung into view, hanging in the starry sky, explosions bursting behind her. Big and blue and beautiful.

“That’s my girl,” Lance breathed.

Blue swung onto the landing pad. He swore she was glowing.

With more professionalism than Lance would ever have, Allura said, “In position. Do you need assistance?”

“I’m on the move!” Lance dove into the open, gesturing at Keith. “C’mon!”

“We are not taking your _prison guard_ ,” Allura insisted as Blue’s mouth lowered and she came racing out. She spun her sparring stick with deadly precision through the group of Galra already at Blue’s feet. “It’s very nice that he’s helping you right now, but you know he must have an ulterior motive, right?”

“Like what?” Lance dodged behind a cruiser ship, panting, “Like escaping the people who raised him like a child soldier? Like redeeming himself? Like— _Keith_! Come on!”

He was still across the room, just staring out the window into the hall. “Go!” he shouted at Lance.

“Yeah, let’s go!” Lance replied, waving wildly at Blue before going back to covering Allura with his blaster.

Shiro piped up, “What was that about him being a child soldier?”

“That’s just how they’re raised,” Allure said through gritted teeth as she fought. “He’s not special.”

“They stole him from his mom,” Lance said.

Keith finally started crossing the room, running straight for Lance.

Allura glared at him. “That happens to all of them.”

“No, they took him when she tried to take him away and then they experimented on him because he’s half-human,” Lance said. “He’s half-human. I mentioned that, right? I did, right? He doesn’t belong—”

Keith had just grabbed his shoulder, shoving him in Blue’s direction, when the doors connecting the rest of the ship slid open.

Lotor stepped forward, surveying the room from the top of the steps. Cape on, hair flowing, backed by a full unit.

Lance leveled his gun at Lotor, but one of his cronies was faster.

A worse shot, though.

He didn’t hit them, just some stupid barrel.

However, it did kind of explode.

So Lance and Keith both went flying. Allura’s shout rang in Lance’s head as he slammed into debris. She was drowned out by his groan, and Keith’s, who’d landed on top of him. 

Keith quieted quickly, pained grunt cut off by a concerned, “Lance? Lance!”

He drew his head off Lance’s chest, bangs falling into his golden eyes as he worriedly took in his face.

Lance’s lids fluttered, probably in pain but not minding it so much with Keith’s weight stretched out on top of him. Bad timing, obviously, but Lance was suddenly very comfortable.

“We have a lion,” he heard Lotor announce smugly. “And a beauty! Princess Allura, I wasn't sure we'd ever have the pleasure of meeting.”

“We still don’t,” she said flatly.

Keith patted Lance’s cheek. “Lance, wake up.”

“I’m not asleep,” he murmured as he forced his eyes open. God, Keith’s face was so close to his. Wide eyes, so worried for him.

“Capture the princess and the paladin,” Lotor ordered his guards. “Keith is mine.”

Lance shook his head, curling his gloved fingers into Keith’s hair.

“Lance,” Keith breathed, not pulling away one bit.

He tugged Keith forward until their mouths met. Keith stilled. Lance tilted his head experimentally, sighing through his nose when Keith’s chapped lips moved against his, tentative and soft.

And everything else faded to the background, just like the movies—which his sisters always insisted was impractical and irresponsible. Lance would say they just didn’t understand romance. Stealing a quick kiss in the heat of battle because you couldn’t bear the thought of dying without knowing the shape of their mouth against yours? _Peak_ romance.

Which he was totally right about.

But so were his sisters.

“Lance,” Allura’s voice cut through the comms. “You can either help me fight or open the doors—you _cannot_ nap with a Galra!”

Lance shot to a sitting position, leaving a wide-eyed Keith half in his lap, solid and warm.

He knew this was a bad time for… any of this, but the severity of the situation didn’t _really_ sink in until he saw the hangar doors shut, an outer door sealing Blue off from space, and an inner door sealing her off from the rest of them, leaving her completely isolated.

And Lotor stalking toward Lance and Keith with the narrow-eyed determination of a predator slinking up to its prey.

“Doors,” Lance said, sliding Keith off his lap. He dropped a kiss on his blushing cheek. “You get the doors, and I’ll handle Lotor.”

He was up and running at Lotor before Keith could stop him.

A jumble of thoughts prompted this plan of action. Lotor would tear Keith to shreds. His team would leave without Keith, but they couldn’t leave without Lance. Therefore, the only option was for Lance to distract Lotor until they could escape. Right?

Well, that’s what was happening. Whether it was a good idea or not.

 “Hey!” Lance shouted at Lotor, who was skulking toward Keith like it was his life’s purpose. “Hey, where do you think you're going? You don't wanna fight me? Hey! _Vrendit fara!_ ”

Lotor slowed, flat yellow eyes dragging up Lance’s body. His thin lips curled. “You are not worth the time it would take for me to kill you.”

Which was fucking rude, even though in Lance’s current condition, it was probably true. But Keith was creeping back to the control panel free and clear, with the guards focused on Allura, and Lance distracting this fucker.

“So Zarkon’s gonna have the black lion,” Lance said, bouncing on his heels, begging for a fight. “You gonna follow him around in Blue? A lil father-son bonding? So cute!”

Lotor’s snarl showed off his spiky white teeth.

“Come on, I already beat you once,” Lance goaded. “Knocked you on your ass when I first got here. You gonna let me win again?”

Lotor threw himself at Lance.

Which was exactly what he wanted. And, Lance decided quickly, was, in fact, a very bad idea.

Because, _fuck_ , Lotor was a good fighter. And melee combat? Was not Lance’s forte.

But he was an excellent dodger. So he did a lot of that, dodging, blocking, rolling, ducking. Lotor didn’t seem to tire at all.

But it sure was pissing him off, and that’s all Lance had been planning to do in the first place.

He whipped his white hair around, laying strike after strike against Lance's shield. It wouldn't break, but his arm was going numb from the vibrations shaking it.

“I don't think anyone off this ship knows who you are,” Lance panted, firing a few wild shots at him. “The whole universe fears Zarkon. But his son?” Lance shook his head, leading him farther across the hangar, closer to Blue and the air lock. “What was your name again? Prince Loser?”

“I am Lotor,” he yelled, kicking him in the gut.

Lance flew back, right past where the bay door had been. So, good, Keith had got the doors open, Lance thought as he slid on his back across the landing pad. The air was colder here, and stiller, so close to the vacuum of space. The floor ended abruptly fifteen feet away; no railing, just a force field that wouldn’t stop him from falling over the edge.

Blue waited, not far from Lance. He could feel her impatience, worry winding her tight.

A battle raged in the dark sky, colourful lions zipping around and bright explosions bursting.

And then, of course, there was Lotor coming straight for Lance.

Metal clanged against metal where his blade met the floor a split second after Lance rolled away.

He threw his shield up.

Lotor slammed his sword onto it, bearing down on him with all his might. “Looks like I win.”

Lance grimaced a smile. “Looks can be deceiving.”

He jerked his bayard out from under his shield, and squeezed off a shot at Lotor’s head. It was a bad angle, but he still got half his ear.

Lotor yowled in shock, reeling back just far enough for Lance to roll away and stumble to his feet.

He brought his shield up with an aching arm, breath dragging out of him, swaying way too close to the landing pad’s edge for comfort.

So Keith picked a good time to roll up looking ready to kill. Like—like some avenging angel or some shit.

“I told you,” he gritted out, knuckles bone-white around his sword. “Not to touch him.”

A pleased thrill tripped down Lance’s spine.

Lotor didn't lower his blade. “Your little pet begged for a fight. What am I if not obliging?”

“Dead, preferably.”

Holy shit, Keith was killing it with this final standoff dialogue. And he’d never even seen an action movie before! He was just naturally this bad ass.

His musing was abruptly interrupted by Lotor advancing on Keith.

Lance, obviously, shot him in the back.

A grunt escaped Lotor. He paused for half a second, considering, and then he was snarling in Lance’s face, too quick for him to react.

Lotor ripped off Lance’s helmet, chucking it across the landing bay. He grabbed his collar and shoved Lance back, until his toes brushed the floor and he was _this_ close to falling over the edge into empty space.

His heart climbed up his throat, fingers scrabbling at Lotor’s arm.

“Don’t!” Keith cried.

Lotor smirked. “And here I thought Haggar was overreacting going to such lengths to keep you apart. But you really _are_ pathetic enough to fall for any scrap of affection offered to you.” He lifted Lance higher. “This will be fun.”

Keith eyes met Lance’s.

And Lance always thought it was Keith’s eyes that made him most human; the white around the edges, the mystifying violet, the big black pupils. But that was all gone now, replaced by a bright gold, like the embers of a dying fire not ready to go out. And Lance could feel him. The terror, the rage, plain across his purple skin and his faintly twitching ears.

So Lance wasn’t shocked by his next move.

Keith leapt at them. Ripped Lance out of Lotor’s grasp and whipped Lance away from the edge.

He bounced across the floor, head rattling around his skull. Dizziness clung to him as he jumped to his feet, but he was ready to dash right back to Keith.

Until he saw Keith shoving Lotor over the edge. And Lotor grabbed Keith’s arm. And instead of pulling back, drawing them both closer to safety, Keith kicked off the floor. And they both went falling into the abyss.

Lance was reminded, one last time, that Keith was Galra. Do or die. Victory or death.

He chose…

No.

Lance scrambled for his helmet, heartbeat thudding like a living being through his every limb. He raced to the edge, where the vast, unyielding darkness of space swallowed up everything but stars and stray laser blasts from the battling ships.

“Lance!” Allura cut through the roaring emptiness in his head.

“What?” Lance said brokenly, throat too tight for anything more.

“Backup!”

Backup. For Allura. Who was risking her life to save him. With Blue.

Lance nodded, dragging himself to his feet. Move. He had to move.

The more steps he took, the faster he got, until he was running up the ramp into Blue.

Quick, quick, if he got there quick, soon, there was still a chance—

He threw himself in the pilot’s seat, a swell of Blue’s relief cresting like a wave to greet him.

“I know, girl,” he soothed, flicking switches as tears blurred his vision. “But I’m here now.” He yanked down a lever to charge an ion blast. “Princess, take cover!”

Allura leapt away from the swarm of guards surrounding her. Lance shot them with the ion cannon. The boom was still echoing as he swung Blue around, urging Allura to get in as he turned to face the stars.

And…

He wiped his wet eyes, blaming his blurred vision—or maybe a hallucination—on what he was seeing.

Allura charged into the cockpit, nearly tripping when she caught sight of what Lance was staring at. Following a thick silence, she said in a flat, disbelieving tone, “Is that Red?”

A giant red lion flew through the stars, dodging ships and blasts and anything that distracted her from her goal.

“Did… did you guys find the red paladin?” Lance asked, as Red ducked below the hangar.

Right where Keith would be.

“No,” Allura said. “No. No, no, no.”

Lance flipped switches and controls and pressed the only communication button he’d never had reason to use: the red lion’s.

“Keith? Come in, Keith! Do you copy? Do you read me? Keith, are you there?”

A staticky, confused groan echoed through Blue's cockpit. “Lance?”

His heart clenched “Yeah!”

“Am I alive?”

“Bish, you tell me! Are you alive?”

“Uh… I guess.”

Lance fell against his seat, relief hitting him like a punch to the gut.

Then Keith started giggling, so low Lance thought he was crying at first, but it quickly erupted into full gut-wrenching laughter. Lance had never heard him laugh, had barely seen him smile, so he jumped to open up a video feed.

Keith’s face was filled the screen, head tossed back, canines shining, a pure, honest smile on his lips.

Warmth bloomed in Lance’s chest. “What?” he asked.

“Ride or die, right?” Keith managed to get out.

And then Lance was laughing with him.

Allura cut in, not looking nearly as buoyant as Lance thought she should. “We still have Galra to fight.”

Lance pulled Blue into the air and out of the hangar, still laughing, still grinning. “Yeah, but we’ve got the red paladin now—holy shit, we can form Voltron!”

“No,” Allura said again, holding onto the back of Lance’s pilot seat.

“Is that—did that seriously just happen?” Hunk’s voice came in. “Do we seriously have a red paladin?”

Allura slapped the back of Lance’s chair. “No!”

Lance swooped down to where Red was hanging in the air, somehow looking smug and satisfied even though she had the same locked expression as always. Through the video feed, Keith was blinking at his surroundings like he was just now noticing where he might be.

“This was a fluke,” Allura insisted, leaning forward until she was in frame. “You aren’t connected to the lion, are you?”

“What’s that mean?” Keith asked, dazed.

“What’s your lion saying?” Lance said.

Allura was halfway through her vehement insistence that it wasn’t _his_ lion when Keith said, “Uh, I think it’s annoyed it had to wait so long.”

Lance laughed; like giddy, fizzy bubbles rising in his throat.

“Holy,” Hunk said, awed. “So we’re forming Voltron?”

“Hell yeah we are,” Pidge came in, totally on board. “I just dropped the prisoners off with a rebel Sa’rase ship, so let’s fuck some shit up!”

“ _Pidge_ ,” Shiro’s sigh crackled through the comms. A beat passed as they all waited on Shiro’s approval. They didn’t have to wait long before he said, “We’re gonna need Voltron to get past this shield.”

Lance nodded at Keith, grin blazing. “You know how to fly?”

Keith’s gaze wandered around the cockpit, trying to decide where to look. Finally he picked straight out the windshield, where Lance could _just_ about see him through space, sitting in Red’s pilot seat where he belonged.

A hint of a challenge sliced through Keith’s pure, honest shock. “What do you think?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Space physics??? I don't her.  
> Besides that, I am very proud of this chapter. Like I hate writing action scenes but this came out SO GOOD??? Lemme know if you agree lol.  
> So yeah, next chap has Voltron officially meeting Keith! And that's gonna be up in a few days, if all goes to plan.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. Friends. My dear, dear readers. I am BLOWN AWAY at your response for the last chapter! Seriously, thank you so much, I love you all.  
> In gratitude, here's another chapter!

First things first, Lance was dropping Allura off at the castle. Partly so she could distract Zarkon and the remaining enemy ships while they formed Voltron, and partly because he didn’t love the idea of her negative energy interrupting his first fight as Voltron.

Allura silenced the comms as they approached the castle. Through the screen, she glared at Keith, whose forehead was furrowed in concentration as he took down Galra ships.

“I don’t trust him, Lance.”

“Well, I do,” he said.

When her gaze turned to him, burning up the side of his face, he looked up at her. Her mouth was pressed flat, big eyes clouded with concern and fear. Fear for Lance, of getting tricked by a big bad Galra.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I understand why you’re worried, and it’s totally fair, but Keith’s different. I promise.”

She didn’t look at all soothed. If anything she looked more freaked out. “Lance—”

He landed Blue in the castle’s hangar and squeezed her hand. “I missed you, Allura.”

She sighed, squeezing back tightly. “I’m glad you’re safe,” she said before hurrying out of Blue.

Lance turned the sound back on as he rejoined the fight. “How’re we doing?”

“Ready when you are,” Pidge replied.

He flew to the general vicinity of the others, flying around each other like anxious, confused kittens.

“So what do we do?” Hunk asked.

“We form Voltron,” Lance said with a casual confidence he didn’t fully feel.

Coran’s voice came in through their helmets. “Just join together as one and become the most powerful weapon in the universe. There’s nothing to it!”

Keith nodded, brows drawn together, deathly serious about the fairly useless advice. Lance snorted quietly, but Keith still shot him a glare through the video feed. Lance winked back.

“Taking heavy fire,” Allura announced as ships drew closer to the paladins.

Pidge shot them down, but more were on their way.

“We’re just gonna do it,” Shiro said, sounding in control but not too confident.

“But _how_ —”

“We trust the lions,” he said. “Concentrate on your bonds. They know what to do.”

Lance closed his eyes, listening to Blue jittering with excitement. She’d been waiting for the chance to do this again for thousands of years. Waiting for _Lance_ for centuries, and then a little longer. She wouldn’t let him down.

“Okay,” Shiro murmured, and Lance knew he’d had a similar conversation with his own lion. The silence that stretched before his next words felt huge. He broke it with, “Form Voltron!”

Lance engaged he thrusters, sending him straight toward his friends.

And for a second, that seemed like all that would happen. They’d all just crash into each other like idiots in the middle of a giant space battle.

But then something else took over, something bigger than any of them alone.

They clicked into place like puzzle pieces—giant, cat-shaped puzzle pieces.

“Is this—did we do it?” Hunk asked. Lance could feel his tentative excitement, swirling with the rest of their dumbfounded awe and nervous anticipation.

“Yes,” Coran said with a quiet reverence. “Oh—well done, paladins.”

“We haven’t done anything yet,” Shiro said. “Let’s see what we can do.”

And they flew forward as one. As Voltron.

 

After so long yearning to live up to Allura and Coran’s stories, it finally felt possible to accomplish the immense task of saving the universe. It was incredible, and terrifying, and breathtaking all at once.

However, even though fighting as Voltron was everything it had been hyped it up to be and more, they weren’t ready to take on Zarkon. At the very least, Lance wasn’t—he’d been exhausted since the start.  

So when the Galra shield trapping them finally fell, they got back to the castle and portaled out of that galaxy like a bat out of hell.

After landing in the castle, Lance spent an extra moment with Blue. She was practically purring with contentment, a waterfall of fondness welcoming him back.

Lance dropped his forehead against the dash, a small, aching smile crossing his cracked lips. “Right back at ya, girl.”

“Knock knock!” Coran’s voice echoed into the cockpit. “Lance? Is everything alright?”

Lance hopped out of his seat and raced to meet Coran.

He caught Lance in a bony hug tight enough to crack his ribs. “Welcome home, my boy.”

And it was just. Immediate tears. Home, he was home. Not on Earth with his mom and dad and siblings, but back with his family all the same.

Coran passed him off to Hunk, who clutched him to his chest and spun him around, lifting him off his feet. Lance squeezed back with all his might, leaking tears against Hunk’s chest plate. He felt moisture in his hair as Hunk buried his face against the top of his head, heavy breath chasing down his neck. “I love you, man.”

Lance nodded, choking out, “I— _yeah_. Yeah.”

Pidge didn’t wait for Hunk to let go before throwing herself at them, demanding to be included in the hug. Lance caught her, glasses squishing against her little face.

Heavy bags pulled at her eyes. Hunks’, too.

“You guys look awful,” Lance laughed, wiping his cheeks.

Pidge punched him in the shoulder, one arm still wrapped around him. “Look who’s talking. I guess you really _do_ need all that moisturizer.”

Lance gaped indignantly. “Excuse me? I look amazing. Always.”

“Of course you do,” Shiro cut in, his wide hand landing on Lance’s back. “But I think you’ve looked _better_.”

Lance turned, blinking up at their leader with wide, wet eyes. He looked even worse than Hunk and Pidge. He must’ve been exhausted, but his shoulders were loose, his lips tugged into a soft smile.

Lance welled up again and Shiro pulled him into his arms, his chest solid against Lance’s cheek. “We missed you, Lance.”

He just couldn’t stop crying. Because how had he ever thought they’d abandon him? He clung to Shiro, terrified of revealing what he’d done in the arena and risking losing this easy acceptance.

“It hasn’t been the same without you,” Allura said sincerely.

Lance offered a watery smile. “Thanks for looking after Blue.”

She shook her head. “Oh, she only let me pilot her today. She wouldn’t do anything without you.”

Lance tossed a huge grin at Blue. Then he checked on Red, whose jaw was sealed tight. “Keith? You coming out?”

A beat passed before he replied, “I can’t seem to figure out how.”

“Red should just open her mouth when you wanna leave.”

“She doesn’t… want to.”

“Aw,” Lance cooed.

Shiro stepped forward, saying, “Red, let him out. He’s not going anywhere, okay?”

Red remained stagnant.

“Sequestering the enemy,” Allura decided, on a completely different wavelength. “Smart.”

Before Lance could so much as throw her a dirty look, Red’s jaw dropped open. Lance shot Allura a smug look instead, though she wasn’t paying attention to him.

Keith limped down the ramp.

Lance jogged over and threw himself into Keith’s arms. “Don’t ever do that again,” Lance said, voice muffled by Keith’s shoulder.

He gently set his hands on his waist. “ _Me_? You went up against Lotor! What were you thinking?”

“Um, pot, kettle?”

His face creased in confusion. “ _What_?”

Lance laughed and squeezed him tighter. Keith’s arms curled around his back, like he wasn’t quite sure that’s where they were supposed to go. Lance let his eyes fall shut, tension leaking out of his body.

He was home. He was safe. And so was Keith.

Lance pulled back enough to face his friends, keeping an arm hooked around Keith’s neck. They were all, unsurprisingly, watching the two of them.

“So, uh, this is Keith,” Lance said. “You might remember him from how we just formed Voltron. So you know him, kinda. You know—you know he’s a good guy, right?”

He gulped. His nerves were transferring to his speech.

It was just. A lot. A lot had happened and he wasn’t up to acting as Keith’s advocate right now, but Allura’s tense posture made him doubt he’d be able to pass out in his bed any time soon.

“Sure, hi.” Hunk spoke up first, always a bro. “Welcome to the team, dude.”

“Thank you, Hunk,” Keith said, though he was looking at Shiro. Waiting for him to revoke the welcome, probably. But he wouldn’t, right? Shiro had to let him stay.

Lance squeezed his shoulder. “You know who everybody is, right?” He was sure he’d described them well enough.

Keith nodded, and listed them, meeting their eye in turn. “Hunk, Pidge. Shiro.” A longer pause. “Coran. Princess Allura. I… don’t think an apology can suffice, but I promise to do everything I can to end Zarkon’s reign, if you’ll accept my help. And if not, I’ll leave.”

Lance’s grip tightened on him. “Keith, don’t be ridiculous—”

“That’s very gracious,” Allura interrupted, relief softening the hard line of her shoulders. “Was there a specific planet you’d prefer to be dropped off on, or will the nearest one suffice?”

Shiro cut a reproachful look her way. “ _Princess_.”

She crossed her arms. “What? I’m being perfectly courteous.”

“I understand this isn’t ideal,” Shiro began. Allura lifted a dangerous brow. His tone switched from steady and calm to something a bit more pleading. “But it’s not as if Lance is bringing home a Galra soldier like a stray dog—Keith is the red paladin. We need him, just like we need Lance. Just like we need Pidge and Hunk. We’ll discuss the matter at length of course, but for now we’re welcoming Keith to the team.”

“Thank you.” Lance nearly collapsed with relief.

Or, maybe more than “nearly” considering his exhaustion levels.

He slumped against Keith, whose grip tightened instinctively.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are you bleeding?” Keith asked, wincing through his own injuries, which were aggravated by taking on Lance’s weight.

“Are _you_ okay?” Lance asked, straightening up.

Keith scowled. “I asked you first.”

“I asked you second!”

“Oh no,” Pidge released a stifled groan.

Hunk elbowed her in the ribs.

“I’m fine,” Lance said defensively.

Shiro looked them both over sceptically. “I’ll believe that after we check you out in med bay.”

Coran nodded, leading him out of the hangar. “Nothing a quick trip to the healing pod won’t fix. I just cleaned them, so they’ll be fresh and sparkling for you!”

Lance kept a good grip on Keith as they walked, not letting him out of his sight. Like, Lance trusted Allura—trusted her with his life—but he didn’t quite trust her not to shove Keith out the airlock and walk away, whistling innocently.

 

“So,” Hunk said. “ _Keith_.”

Lance leaned against Hunk as he looked at Keith in the healing pod. Lance had gotten out a few minutes before, so he was all healed up, but still exhausted and dying for human contact.

Keith looked so young, lit by the glowing lights behind the glass. He was lankier than his padded soldier uniform had made him appear; still muscular, but not nearly as broad. He just looked small, whittled down to the pajama-like healing pod clothes.

Lance smiled softly. “Yeah.”

Pidge groaned.

“What? Guys, he’s a really good friend. He’s—I don’t know what I would’ve done without him.”

Well, he did know, actually. He… would not have made it. He’d just _barely_ scraped by as it was, but without some kind of contact, without Keith there to talk him down after that battle with the Amphlian…

But his friends had worried enough. They didn’t need to freak out retroactively.

Lance had explained some of what went down on the prison ship before the healing pod, while Coran did his physical. Keith had argued through what most of Lance had said, but the others got the gist.

Keith had helped him. Lance trusted Keith. Why couldn’t that be the end of it?

“Right. _Friend_ ,” Hunk said.

“C’mon, he’s the red paladin,” Lance pleaded. “Just get to know him. You’ll like him, I promise.”

“Not as much as you,” Pidge said, leaning against the center console.

“Huh?”

“You fell for a fucking Galra,” she said flatly.

Lance opened his mouth, closed it. Shook his head. Opened his mouth again. Blushed throughout all of it.

He’d planned to wait to bring this up until they got to know Keith, until he wasn't just some strange Galra he brought home, but somebody they could trust. And obviously after having some sort of conversation with Keith.

But apparently he had not been subtle.

“Did Shiro notice?” Lance asked. His stomach dropped asking, “Did Allura?”

Pidge shook her head. “I think you throwing heart eyes at a Galra would’ve blown their minds.”

“He’s only half,” Lance stressed, leaning into Hunk’s side for comfort.

Pidge lifted her hand. “Yeah, I have questions about that—”

Lance cut her off. “I don’t know how sex worked between Keith’s parents.”

“I don’t care about the sex! Just, you know, everything that came after that. His genetic makeup, the experiments, his physiology—”

“I don’t know. And he doesn’t either,” Lance said when she opened her mouth.

She crossed her arms, burying her pout in her collar.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Hunk said, forcing them back on track. He eyed Keith nervously. 

Lance squeezed his arm. “You gotta give him a chance.”

Hunk nodded. “Yeah, I mean, we’re giving him a chance just letting him be on the ship.” He rushed on when Lance opened his mouth to complain, “Like, I trust you, Lance. And I trust Keith to probably not kill us all in our sleep, but…”

“Hunk doesn’t think you should rush into a romantic relationship,” Pidge finished.

Hunk shot her a betrayed look. “We _both_ agreed.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want Keith blaming it on me when it doesn’t work out.”

Hunk’s face blanched.

“You don’t need to be scared of him,” Lance said, pulling away from Hunk to have a proper conversation. _Argument_ , maybe, was the better word.

“I’m not,” Pidge insisted.

Hunk glared at Pidge again, obviously regretting bringing her for backup. “This is not what we discussed.”

She shrugged widely. “Yeah, but he looks all… sad and mopey.”

Lance smiled reflexively when they both turned to him, concern dragging down their faces. “No! No sad and mopey here! Only fun times. Happy and smiley.”

He’d had enough sad and mopey in his cell. He was home now, and he was safe, and there was nothing to worry about except saving the universe from Zarkon. Which he had to be in tip-top shape for. No distractions, no hallucinations, no random bouts of crying.

He was gonna be okay.

He was gonna be _great_.

Neither of them seemed to buy his blinding grin, which was annoying. How was he supposed to return to normalcy if his friends wouldn’t enable him?

“Okay, sure,” Hunk said, not at all convincingly. “But can you give us some time to warm up to Keith? Like, you guys didn’t hit it off immediately, right?”

He thought about lying, but there’s no way Hunk would’ve bought it. “Well… no.”

Hunk nodded. “So what was that like?”

Lance scratched the back of his neck, thinking back to begging Keith to touch him and then trying to steal his sword. “I guess we started off a bit rocky. You know how Shiro’s always saying to use your surroundings to your advantage? Well, Keith was my only surroundings, so… I mean, in the beginning I was only nice to him so he’d let me out.”

“And that was smart,” Hunk said. “It worked.”

“Like, he knew that’s what I was doing,” Lance said. “But I guess he was just as desperate as me…” he trailed off.

Keith knew he liked him for real now, right? Was that why he’d insisted on leaving when they were in the vent, because he thought Lance was still manipulating him?

But Lance had _kissed_ him after that. He knew that meant something, right?

Keith had almost died for him, for fuck’s sake. He had to know. Right?

“Which is what’s got me worried,” Hunk said, continuing the conversation while Lance spiralled.

“Hunk, buddy,” Lance said gently, “everything gets you worried.”

He rolled his eyes. “C’mon. Keith was like the only person you talked to for a month and a half. And now you have a crush on him? Isn’t that a little…”

Lance dragged an exhausted hand over his face. “Do not say Stockholm Syndrome.”

“It’s more like…” Pidge began, adjusting her glasses. “Remember when the Garrison stopped serving pop in the caf, and we were stuck with their weird protein juice drinks? And they were all gross, but the red flavour at least didn’t have a bitter aftertaste, so you drank that all the time, until you swore it was better than pop?”

It took Lance a second to get what she was saying. Then he squawked, "Keith is not weird red drink! Keith is Mountain Dew!"

Pidge scrunched her nose in distaste.

Lance jerked a thumb at his chest. " _I_ like it!"

Hunk rubbed his back soothingly. “You latch on, is all. Allura’s concerned, too.”

“The red lion vouches for him.”

Pidge snorted. “Red doesn’t wanna suck face with him.”

Lance flushed. “That really—that doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”

Hunk narrowed his eyes, inspecting Lance’s blushing face suspiciously. Then tilted his head back with a groan. “You already did, didn’t you?”

“No! I mean—I kissed him.” When Hunk groaned louder, Lance protested, “Just a little! And I dunno… Maybe he doesn’t feel the same way.”

“Hm, yeah.” Pidge tapped her chin sarcastically. “I dunno if giving up everything he’s ever known to get you to safety and then almost killing himself to keep you alive means he _like_ likes you.”

Well, yeah, but Keith was also pretty wishy-washy about _staying_ with Lance, so that was a bit of a mixed signal.

But Pidge had a good point.

Lance lifted a brow. “So you’re saying I should go for it.”

Hunk cut in before Pidge could reply. “ _I_ think, personally, and it’s just my opinion, but I’m saying that you should probably definitely get to know each other outside of your unbalanced prisoner dynamic before deciding on anything.”

“Because you think with access to different juices, I’m gonna realize I don’t actually like him?”

Hunk fiddled with his headband. “No…”

Lance raised both brows, calling bullshit.

Hunk looked at Pidge pleadingly.

“They could still be friends…” she prompted with a wave of her hand. Oh geez, Hunk had practiced this whole speech. He meant business.

“Right!” Hunk turned back to Lance. “I’m not saying you won’t end up being really good friends. Like, he’s the red paladin, I really want this to work out.” He spread his palms. “But I’m just being honest about where I currently stand on the issue. And I think—like, don’t _you_ want some time to recover?”

He crossed his arms. “I don’t know why I can’t recover while I’m making out—”

The med bay door hissed open and Lance immediately snapped his jaw shut. He didn’t want anybody outside of the room to be privy to this conversation. He barely wanted to be having this conversation with Pidge and Hunk.

Pidge rolled her eyes and Hunk gave him a _look_ that pretty clearly translated to “if you’re not comfortable with everybody knowing about your crush on Keith, maybe don’t start up a relationship with Keith!”

Which was an annoyingly persuasive argument.

Shiro strolled in, red bayard swinging from his hand. He nodded at Lance. “Good, you’re up. And looking better.”

Lance lifted his chin, proudly accepting the compliment. “Thank you.”

Shiro poked around at Keith’s pod’s controls. “Coran said he should be about ready. I was gonna give him this.” He held up the red bayard. “To welcome him to the team.”

“Oh, we’re giving the Galra a weapon immediately,” Hunk said, a little squeaky. “Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”

Lance directed a pouty sound in Hunk’s direction. He shrugged apologetically.

“Let’s try to make this work,” Shiro said. “Are you getting any bad vibes from him, Hunk?”

“Well… no.” He was almost reluctant, but he was honest.

Lance grinned.

“And you’re our best judge of character, right?” Shiro asked.

He sighed. “Yes.”

Lance went in for another Hunk hug, which he immediately reciprocated. He nodded back at Shiro. “It’s a great idea. Keith’ll probably feel really out of place without his sword, and I don’t know where any of his stuff went.”

Shiro pressed his lips together, muttering under his breath, “Somehow it all ended up in the incinerator.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask Allura about it,” Pidge said.

Before Lance could ask _any_ of them about it, the door to Keith’s pod slid open.

Lance moved closer. Keith, smartly, stayed in the pod a few extra moments to gather his bearings before stepping out. He still took Lance’s outstretched hand, even though he probably wouldn’t have fallen like Lance always did.

Lance stood as close to him as possible, Keith’s warmth soaking through the thin shirts they both wore. It felt almost intimate, being this close with no armour in the way.

Shiro presented the red bayard to Keith, explaining how it was the weapon of the paladins and how welcome he was to the team.

“Uh, thank you,” Keith said, cautiously taking the bayard from him.

“Try it out,” Lance encouraged.

Keith shot him a sceptical look. “Do I just…?”

He flicked the bayard and a red-tinted sword flashed into existence. He waved it around to test it out, awed and pleased.

“Oh!” Lance said, a fun idea striking him. “We should knight you.”

“What?”

“A knighthood, not like the night time,” Shiro explained in response to Keith’s confusion. “It’s a great honour on Earth, one which Lance absolutely does _not_ have the authority to offer.”

“Well, the resident princess sure won’t do it,” Lance said. And hopefully it would make Keith feel a little more welcome. Of course, it kind of lost its effect when Keith didn’t even know what a knighthood _was_ , but that wasn’t stopping Lance.

He spread his arms. “Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. We are gathered here today to formally welcome a new paladin to the team. He has earned this knighthood through various acts of bravery and compassion—”

“Uh, what?” Keith asked.

“Keith, shh,” Lance said.

Keith shot a glance at the other three, who didn’t seem at all surprised by this turn of events. 

“Kneel, please,” Lance said to Keith.

“Why?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m gonna knight you, _hello_.”

Keith unsurely kneeled on the floor in front of Lance. Lance carefully took his bayard from him, explaining he was going to tap his shoulders with the sword so he didn’t freak out when a weapon came at him.

“Now bow your head.”

Keith frowned up at him from under his bangs, but lowered his head without protest.

Lance smiled and lifted the sword. “I dub thee Sir Keith, paladin of Voltron.” He tapped the blade against Keith’s right shoulder, then his left. “You may rise.”

He got to his feet.

Pidge, Hunk and Shiro clapped politely, like the nobles they were emulating.

Lance set the sword back in Keith’s hands. “You are now officially part of the team.”

“Um… thanks.” Keith lifted a shoulder. “That means a lot?”

“Congratulations, Keith,” Shiro said. “But we need to debrief, so if everybody could gather in the dining hall?”

Lance bit back a groan. He was sure he could wriggle out of the obligation for a little while longer if he begged for a nap, but while the thought of his soft bed made his knees weak, his empty room did not. He was dreading being more than an arm’s length out of hug range from anybody.

Hunk slung an arm around his shoulders. “C’mon, I whipped up something amazing to welcome you back.”

Lance smiled up at him gratefully.

“Could I get my armour back first?” Keith asked.

Lance and Shiro shared a look.

“I’ll do you one better,” Lance said after a moment. “Real people clothes.”

 

Lance gave Keith the room across the hall from his and told him to raid the closet from a better outfit.

As soon as Lance was alone in his room, it was too quiet. So as much as he was itching to get at his skin care products, he skipped them and went straight to dressing in his iconic green jacket and jeans.

He checked himself out in the mirror, ready to give himself a thumbs up and a wink, when he finally saw his reflection.

The others weren’t kidding about how shit he looked. He’d had a quick shower before he got in the healing pod, so this must’ve been an upgrade, which was a horrifying thought. It wasn’t just the cluster of zits sprouting on his chin, or his dull hair, or the dark bags under his eyes. It was his hollowed cheeks, his new scars, the way his shoulders curved in to make himself smaller.

He averted his gaze, creeped out by the shell looking back at him. That’s when he saw his toothbrush.

He jumped on it. He wasn’t missing the chance to scrub the layers of plaque from his teeth.

He’d just stuck it in, space toothpaste sort-of minty in his mouth, when a knock sounded on his door.

It was Keith, looking as awkward as he had in the med bay. He’d changed into black jeans, fingerless gloves and a black shirt under a cropped red jacket.

Lance lifted a brow, still brushing his teeth.

Keith shrugged self-consciously. “What? I thought it looked okay.”

Lance grinned and tugged him in by the hand. He went to spit in the sink while Keith drifted further into the room, letting the door slide shut behind him.

“It’s cute,” Lance called, cupping his hands with water to rinse. “But I take back my self-confidence from the hangar. I’ve never looked worse.”

“Yeah, I remember you looking significantly less… tired when we first met.”

“Less tired” was definitely a politer way of saying “less shit”.

Lance finished in the bathroom and found Keith investigating his souvenirs scattered across his dresser. Mostly pretty rocks, some shells, and other tiny bits of nature that didn’t exist on Earth.

This was the first time they’d been alone together since the vent. The first time they’d really had a chance to talk, but there still wasn’t enough time right now for all the things Lance needed to say.

So he just dropped his head on Keith’s shoulder from behind. “So… human, huh?”

“Huh?”

“I said we’d talk about it later.”

His huge sigh expanded against Lance’s chest. “You weren’t surprised, were you?”

“Not really,” he admitted, slipping his arms around his waist in a hug. “I mean, you were either human or you’d _completely_ missed out on vegetables growing up.”

He snorted, turning in Lance’s arms. And then they were face-to-face, Lance’s hands resting at the small of Keith’s back.

“You’re, uh, real… handy, huh?” Keith said.

Lance lifted a brow, amusement tugging at his lips. “Am I?”

“Or—” He frowned. “I don’t know, there’s not a word for it in my language. Touchy?”

 _“_ Touchy-feely?” he offered.

His ears flicked flat. “You’re making that up.”

Lance shook his head, laughing as Keith’s unimpressed-ness grew. “Wait, were you trying to say handsy?”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said handy. Handy and handsy are two very different things.”

“I’m not hearing a difference.” He crossed his arms, putting another half-inch distance between them. “You put your hands all over people, is the point I’m trying to make.”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed. He leaned back. “Is that a problem?”

He looked down at Lance’s fingers curled up in his shirt. “No. Just… are you always like this?”

Lance took a moment to consider his answer. “I mean, I can usually keep my hands to myself for longer than five minutes, but after isolation I’m just dying for it, you know?”

Keith nodded slowly, gaze heavy. “I know.”

Lance almost leaned in.

Then a knock sounded at the door.

“Um, you two are kind of vital to this debriefing.” Pidge’s voice came through the wall. “So if you could play tonsil hockey _later_ —”

“Pidge!” Lance snapped, tearing away from Keith.

“What’s hockey?”

Pidge snorted as Lance threw the door open.

“Nothing,” Lance said, glaring at Pidge. Did she not understand the precarious nature of their situation? She was gonna scare him off.

She lifted an amused brow. Unafraid of Keith _and_ Lance, it seemed. “Come on, guys. Plenty of time for that later.”

Lance sighed. She was right. Plenty of time for heartfelt conversations later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! They are safe! And everybody is relieved!  
> We're nearing the end, but there's still some things to wrap up! Next chapter is one last Keith POV!! It'll probs be up Sunday. And last chapter may go up along with it, or on Monday, as it's p short.  
> And that'll be after S3. I can't wait to see canon blow my Lotor characterization to smithereens lmao.  
> Lemme know your thoughts!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty!!!! Penultimate chapter! I just wanna say thanks, again, to everybody who's left feedback, it sustains me.

Keith caught Shiro alone before the debriefing.

He squeezed the bayard on his hip, an easy replacement of the standard-issue sword that had hung at his side since he was fourteen.

Keith had been sure trying to activate the bayard would be the last straw, that he’d be exposed as a fraud and the bayard wouldn’t work for him. But a sword flashed into existence, the length and weight of which suited him even better than his old one. It felt an extension of his arm more than a weapon.

He was still working on convincing himself that all the signs pointed to one undeniable truth: that he was the red paladin. He still didn’t believe it, but Lance did.

“Sir, may I speak freely?” Keith asked Shiro.

Shiro’s lips twitched, exposing his amusement. But he settled his features into something more neutral when he saw how serious Keith was. “You can always speak freely, Keith. And you don’t have to call me sir.”

Keith didn’t understand that at all, but he said, “Understood” anyway.

When Lance had talked about Shiro, Keith had assumed he spoke so casually about the team’s leader because Shiro wasn’t present. When he said stuff like “Space Dad”, or expressed an excess of affection, Keith assumed that would be toned down in front of his superior officer.

It was _not_. The whole team was like that with Shiro. He obviously had their respect, but there was even more easy fondness and casualness.

Keith didn’t know how to act like that—with anyone really, but certainly not a superior.

“It’s about Lance,” Keith prefaced the conversation, just like he’d practiced in his head. He absolutely didn’t have the authority to make suggestions about running the team, but this was important. “Obviously, he’s not his best. I’m not sure how forthcoming he’ll be with you, but he’s had hallucinations from being isolated. I don’t know how long he’ll take to recover, but I’d advise against putting him in active duty immediately.”

“Oh, of course,” Shiro said, taken aback at the thought. Keith couldn’t help looking at the blistered scar cutting across his nose, his tuft of stress-white hair, his Galra-inflicted prosthetic, and wonder if Shiro had had any time to recuperate since escaping a different prison ship. “Of course not. I have no intention of putting more stress on Lance any time soon. He needs to rest.”

“Good, thank you,” Keith said. “I just wasn’t sure how you handled things here, and Lance has been through a lot.”

His face softened. “I know, but we’re gonna take care of him now. You don’t have to worry.”

 Keith let himself sigh a little in relief. He’d done it. Lance was back with the people who cared about him, he was safe.

Coran poked his head out of the dining hall to tell them the food was ready.

“Just a moment, Coran,” Shiro said.

“Alright, but if you don’t get in here soon, there might not be anything left!”

Coran disappeared into the dining hall and Shiro turned back to Keith. He was silent for a moment, but he clearly had more to say.

Keith forced himself not to fidget under his heavy gaze.

“If I may speak freely…” Shiro began. It took Keith a moment to understand that was supposed to be some sort of joke. “If it was just Lance vouching for you, in his state, I’d be a lot more wary about having you here. But I can’t argue with Red. Blue must’ve been communicating with her, or sensed your good intentions or… some complicated lion intuition that I’m unaware of.” He spread his hands. “All I know is that Red hasn’t moved an inch since we stole her back from the Galra, but she flew out all on her own to save you. She chose you, and I’d like to believe she chose well. So don’t let me down, okay?”

 “I won’t,” he said, even though that was a lot pressure and he wasn’t sure he could live up to expectations. But he desperately wanted to. He’d never felt so welcomed—like people actually _wanted_ him around—in his life.

“I look forward to getting to know you, Keith.”

Keith nodded vigorously. “You too, Lance speaks very highly of you.”

Shiro smiled fondly. “I have to admit, I’m grateful he had you in there. I don’t even want to think about the state he’d be in if he was completely alone all this time.”

“Oh, he would’ve…” Keith started to dismiss Shiro’s gratitude, but the phantom feeling of Lance sobbing in his arms returned, when Lance had insisted he wouldn’t make it through another battle. “He’s safe now,” he said firmly. “He’ll be okay.”

“And you played a part in that, so thank you.” He lifted a shoulder. “That said, Allura’s going to put up a fight, which—”

“I understand completely,” he assured him. “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“Good. Just don’t give her any more reasons to be upset.”

Keith nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He shook his head. “Please don’t call me that in front of the others.”

 

It was a long dinner debriefing. Some odd combination of the two activities that Keith had never experienced. His debriefings had always been curt, to the point. No opinions or over-explanations, because nobody wanted to know what Keith thought.

But Lance wanted to know what his team had been up to—which mostly involved making alliances with nearby planets—and then they all listened intently to Lance’s experience.

Lance smiled and joked through his retelling, complaining about the boredom and the bad food rather than the horror and loneliness, which Keith found odd, but not altogether unexpected coming from Lance.

He looked different in his Earth clothes—comfortable. Rumpled jacket, loose-fitting pants. He looked at home.

Allura wasn’t near as settled as Lance. Her cool glares at Keith whenever he deigned to speak kept him largely silent, until Lance got to the arena battle where he’d fought the Amphlian.

His voice grew quieter and slower until he stopped speaking altogether. He stared at his plate, which was a swirl of the different foods he’d been mixing together as he spoke.

“And then um, there was another arena battle and—I uhhh won.” He took a deep breath, setting his fork down with a shaking hand. “And then Keith went on a mission, I guess, and the next time he showed up, he was getting me out and you guys were there.”

Keith shot him a questioning glance. He’d left out a few glaring details. Was he not going to tell them? Was he still worried they’d cast him out just for _surviving_?

Lance wouldn’t meet his eye. So Keith didn’t push.

“What kind of mission?” Allura asked accusingly. Keith had definitely gotten rougher receptions before—more straight-up aggressive instead of her passive-aggressiveness—but something about Allura made him feel smaller and _worse_ than facing down enemies in a real fight.

Lance peeked at Keith, silently begging him to go along with it and not mention the Amphlian. “Yeah, did it have to do with that Thace guy?”

“I talked to him, yeah,” Keith hedged.

Could he get away with a half-truth? Was that how he wanted to start his time here? Shiro said not to give Allura any more reasons to be upset, but how much more upset would all of them be if they found out the truth later?

Keith recapped his first conversation with Thace, before quietly admitting, “Then I was sent to deal with the rebels on Sa’rase.”

Allura sat up impossibly straighter, the lines of her body hard as a razor. “Is that so? So how many of our allies did you kill?”

Warning bells rang through his head, but he stayed still, quiet, hopefully unthreatening. His breathing turned shallow, just enough to keep him functioning, because anything louder would bring him too much attention.

But Allura’s attention, and everyone else’s, was already on him. He had no choice but to speak.

“I wasn’t counting,” he finally said.

Allura’s sharp intake of breath felt hugely loud in the otherwise silent room. “Oh, there were too many to count? How much innocent blood is on your hands, Galra?”

Keith stared at the cup in front of him, heart pounding in his throat. “Truthfully, most of my missions solely involved recon, Princess.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

Keith gave a miniscule shake of his head. He wasn’t lying, but there was no reason for Allura to believe him. Still, he explained, “I was never considered worthy of dying in combat.”

The time between his statement and someone else speaking felt like forever, but since it was Lance who spoke up, it couldn’t have been that long.

“Well,” Lance said stiltedly. “Lucky us.”

Allura hummed loudly in the negative. “So, what? This mission prompted a change of heart? You finally realized the Galra’s actions are reprehensible?”

Keith nodded. Elaboration seemed unnecessary. “And when I returned to the ship, before I went to Lance, Thace told me about a resistance within the Galra. The Blade of Marmora. They may be able to offer us aid.” He added before Allura could argue, “Or I could join them. I was supposed to.”

Lance jerked straight, an incredulous noise falling from his lips.

“I think that would be best,” Allura said thinly.

“Except he’s the red paladin,” Shiro said with a pointed look. She returned it coolly. “It’s his decision—” he stopped himself, turning to Keith. “Unless you’d rather join the Blade of Marmora.”

Lance scoffed. “Of course not—”

“Let Keith answer for himself.”

There was a pause while everyone looked at Keith expectantly.

“I…” Keith began, gaze flicking from Allura—looking ready to skin him, calmly and with precision—to Coran, Shiro, Pidge and Hunk, who wore varying shades of unease.

And finally Lance, imploring and impatient.

Of course Keith didn’t want to go, he didn’t want to leave Lance. And he knew what being the red paladin meant—even though he couldn’t quite believe it was _him_. But having five paladins in Voltron was vital, and leaving wouldn’t help, as much as Allura might insist otherwise.

But did Keith deserve to stay here, right where he wanted? He hadn’t earned that.

“I want to help,” Keith said. “But if my being here will cause problems—”

“Keith,” Pidge cut him off.

She’d been inspecting him for most of the meal—not scared, not angry, simply studying him with a narrow-eyed curiosity, like she wasn’t sure what to make of him.

“You _leaving_ will cause problems,” Pidge said. “We need to be able to form Voltron to save the universe—our time fighting so far with less than five paladins has made that very clear. So whatever you did before…” She snuck a glance at Lance before turning back to Keith. “You’ll just have to make up for it. Besides, you’ve formed Voltron with us already. That means something.” She elbowed Hunk. “ _Right_?”

After a beat, Hunk nodded. “Sure. I mean, right? If he had ulterior motives, we’d have picked up on it. Right?”

He looked to Allura, seriously wanting confirmation and not just support for his point.

Lance cut in before she could respond. “ _Exactly_. Allura, you just had to be there—”

“I was _there_ when the Galra destroyed my planet,” she said, nails digging into the tabletop. “I was _there_ when Zarkon betrayed Voltron, which none of his team saw coming. So no, I don’t think you can trust him simply because the red lion snatched him out of the sky and you flew around as Voltron!”

Silence erupted in response, her audience shifting uncomfortably.

Allura tucked an errant strand of hair behind her pointed ear, like she’d meant to control herself and was trying to come off more restrained in the aftermath.

She took a measured breath. “I agree that forming Voltron should be a priority—”

“Perf,” Lance said.

“But not at the expense of our safety,” she finished.

“Princess,” Shiro said. “I absolutely understand your concern, but we talked about this.”

She flicked an annoyed hand. “Yes, yes. Your probationary period.” Then she scowled and descended into some muttered cursing only peppered with translatable words

Shiro proposed a short probationary period where they’d train with Keith, basically sizing him up, but without taking him on any high-risk missions. And at the end of it, if the team (Allura, specifically) wasn’t satisfied, they’d ask him to leave.

“But I doubt it will come to that,” Shiro added.

Because they needed Keith to form Voltron.

“Aw, come on,” Lance said. “He doesn’t need to be on probation.”

Coran leaned forward on his elbows. “Lance, I promise you this is a good compromise. This is a win!”

“And we’ll want to spend a lot of time training together anyway,” Shiro said. “To get used to each other. I think the Galra way of fighting is a little different from ours.”

They were all looking at Keith again, as if for confirmation.

“Yes,” he said. Then, “And I accept these terms. I’ll leave whenever you ask me to.”

Allura pressed her lips together, as if to forcibly stop herself from asking him to leave immediately.

“Does my vouching for him mean nothing?” Lance demanded, looking around the table. “Don’t you guys trust me?”

Allura massaged her temples. “I have the utmost faith in you, Lance. But you’ve been through a trauma, so I apologize if your judgement is called into question. Not to mention that the Galra have brainwashing technology—”

Lance slumped back in his chair, groaning, “Oh my _gooood_. I’m not brainwashed. Keith, tell her.”

“Uh, I didn’t brainwash him,” Keith said. “But that’s also what I would say if I _had_ brainwashed you, so—“

“Exactly,” Allura said with a small nod.

Lance stood, shoving his chair away from the table. “Oh good, I’m glad you two can finally agree on something—that I’m not sound of mind. Do you not remember the part where he flung himself into deep space to get Lotor away from me? What was that stupid move supposed to accomplish?”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Keith snapped, not following his point.

“Exactly!” He jabbed a finger at Allura. “How was he gonna benefit from tricking me if he was dead?”

She set her jaw, simply glaring back. There was no way she’d up and accept Keith’s presence on this ship, no matter how many of his limited good deeds Lance threw in her face.

She rose as well, significantly more graceful than Lance. “Obviously you don’t need my permission. Everyone else has already welcomed him with open arms.”

The she spun on her heel and left the room.

“Don’t steal my dramatic exit!” Lance complained, and stomped out the opposite door.

The room was left awkwardly quiet in their absence.

Keith twisted around to check the door in case, by some miracle, Lance returned and told Keith what the hell he was supposed to do in response to that.

He did not.

“Does he do that often?” Keith asked.

“Oh my, yes,” Coran said.

“If no one follow him he gets upset,” Pidge added.

Keith was halfway out of his seat before he asked Shiro, “May I be excused, sir?”

Pidge erupted in laughter, the force of it nearly choking her, prompting Hunk to worriedly pat her back.

“You don’t need to call me sir,” Shiro said, sending Pidge a dirty look. “And yes.”

Keith paused again to thank Hunk for the meal before following Lance into the corridor.

He wasn’t far, frowning as he peeked around the corner at the end of the hall. Keith reached him quickly, though he didn’t know what he was supposed to say.

“Do you hear—?” Lance began before shaking his head. “Never mind.”

He reached out to touch Keith’s shoulder, sliding his palm down his arm before dropping it.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Keith said, not sure what else to say, or how to erase the exhaustion suddenly weighing Lance down.

Lance shook his head. “It’s—whatever. It could’ve gone worse, I guess.” He nodded down the corridor, leading Keith away from the dining hall. They hadn’t been walking long when Lance said, “You shouldn’t have told Allura about that mission to Sa’rase, though.”

“ _You_ brought it up.”

 “Yeah, well.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

Which would’ve been a perfectly fine excuse except, “Yes, you did. I told you in the vent I’d been sent—”

“Shit, right, you were stabbed.” Lance stopped walking, looking him over for injury even though Keith had been in two healing pods since.

“I’m fine.”

“What happened?” he asked.

Keith hesitated.

And the way Lance’s face dropped _hurt_.

Which Keith understood, but he was getting tired of accepting things just because they made sense. It made sense that Thace didn’t tell him about his origins, because Keith would’ve obsessed over his past. It made sense that his mother left him, because she would’ve been punished for trying to leave, or having him in the first place. It made sense that Lance expected the worst.

But it still hurt. Keith had given up everything he’d ever known for Lance. Not that he’d left behind anything to miss, but it was familiar. This was all new, and Keith was walking such a fine line trying to stay here, and Lance still doubted him.

“There was this family, I found them in their home. I was supposed to get rid them, but I let them escape,” Keith explained quietly. “Well—the daughter stabbed me with my sword, and when my unit came, I didn’t tell them where they’d gone.”

Lance stared at him, tension draining from his limbs as it sunk in. “Okay. That’s good. We can work with that.”

“You’re sure you want to bother?”

“What? _Yes_.” He stepped closer. “Keith, even if you weren’t the red paladin, I’d want you here. I’ve seen what you can do, I know—I know you. And the rebels… Well, there were a lot of Galra soldiers down there. If it hadn’t been you, it would’ve been someone else.”

Keith blinked “Are you kidding me?”

“What?”

“That’s the exact same argument I used with you and that prisoner.”

Lance stared at him, jerked out of his impassioned speech. “It’s different—”

“Yeah, what I did was obviously worse—”

“Okay it was bad, but Shiro made sure the rebels knew what they were getting into. They were _prepared_. They died fighting for what they believed in.”

“They died—” Keith cut himself off from finishing with _as a distraction_. They were a distraction to rescue Lance, the reminder of which would only make him feel worse. So he switched tracks. “Lance, I’m still here even though your friends have every reason to hate and distrust me. They are not gonna be bothered if you tell them about the Amphlian.”

Lance dropped his head, shoulders curling inward. “And another alien while you were gone,” he mumbled. “And I think they’ll be _bothered_.”

Keith lifted his hand, barely away from his side, but Lance took it for the offer it was. He twined their fingers together, clinging like a lifeline.

“They won’t do whatever you’re afraid of,” Keith told him. “Not after everything they did to get you back. They’ll just be grateful you’re alive.”

It was simple to Keith. Because Lance made it seem simple. Ride or die. They wouldn’t go anywhere without him.

“You shouldn’t worry about it when you don’t have to,” Keith continued. “They know you, they don’t know me. I’m only here because they need me to form Voltron.”

 “And you?” Lance lifted his head to search his face. “Do you want to be here? Because you seem really willing to leave—”

“No,” Keith said. “I don’t want to go. But I can’t put my foot down and demand to stay like you’re doing.”

“I get that, but even back on the ship—” He stopped halfway through his sentence, switching from disappointed to earnest in a second. His grip tightened on Keith’s hand. “You know I want you here, right? I care about you?”

Keith blushed, but he tried to cover it up with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah, Lance. Somewhere between you pleading my case with your friends in the middle of a battle and pouting every time Allura tells me to leave, I figured you wanted me to stay.”

“Good.” Lance nodded slowly. “Good.” They started walking again, clasped hands swinging idly between them. He bit down on his lip before saying, “Can I ask you a question?”

“I guess?”

He quirked a brow. “How’d that alien get your sword, dude? You wouldn’t even let _me_ get it.”

Keith released a puff of shocked laughter. A smile spilled across Lance’s mouth in return. How could this boy joke about literally anything? And why did it just make Keith like him _more_ , that Lance could lighten the mood in a second?

“I was having an existential crisis,” Keith defended.

Lance winked at him. “All things considered, that’s probably a good thing.”

Keith looked away, fighting the heat rising in his cheeks.

Lance slowed, bringing them to a stop in some identical hall, though they’d taken a few turns as they walked. “So you really wanna be here, right? With me?”

More than anything in his life. “Yeah.”

Lance stepped closer, prompting Keith to back up. But their hands were still joined, and there was a wall right behind him, so Keith was left looking up at a smiling Lance, just _that much_ taller, with little space separating them.

A tightness in Keith’s chest loosened when Lance got this close, but at the same time his throat closed up, because Lance couldn’t possibly feel the same. It was just him and his touching. Him being handy. He did this with everyone. Keith shouldn’t overthink it.

But that kiss in the hangar… He’d never experienced anything like that before. It made Keith feel like he was _soaring_ , breathless and elated.

And if that wasn’t what Lance intended, Keith needed to stop wishing for it to happen again.

So what he said next was, “Is kissing like all other touching for you?”

Lance shook his head, like he knew exactly what Keith was really asking. “Not on the mouth.”

He waited for Lance to explain. Why, then? Why had he kissed him? Why... Why had he been so gentle, even in the heat of battle?

“Did you um,” Lance began. “Did you not want me to?”

Keith balked. “What _I_ wanted wasn’t really relevant when you were a prisoner.”

“Yeah. Fair. But, uh.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m not a prisoner anymore. So what do you want?”

Keith wanted to flip them around so he had Lance against the wall, press up close so their bodies aligned like in the hangar. Feel Lance’s heartbeat against his chest, eat up every moan and sigh as he covered Lance’s mouth with his own. Slide his palms under his shirt to get his hands on that wide expanse of skin, follow it with his mouth, and touch him, taste him.

But that was aggressive. That was too much. He couldn’t do _that_.

So he said, “It doesn’t matter.”

Lance licked his lips, which Keith was keenly aware of because he was staring at them. He switched to Lance’s eyes, which was a bad idea because Lance was looking at Keith’s mouth now.

And _oh_. Maybe what Keith wanted wasn’t too much.

“It matters,” Lance said lowly. “What you want matters. You’re not some faceless soldier anymore. You’re not gonna get beat up for having an opinion.”

Keith twisted his free hand in the back of Lance’s jacket. “I’m not worried about getting beat up. I’d rather get beat up than kicked off this ship and lose you.”

Lance pressed him forehead to his. “You’re not gonna lose me.”

As much as he wanted to, Keith couldn’t believe that. He couldn’t believe he’d made it this far, that it had _worked out_ for him. Death was always on his periphery, a very real outcome for any fight he got in. And he was sure it was coming for him when he threw himself at Lotor and sent them both spinning into empty space.

So everything after that felt like a fever dream.

He was welcome on this ship—for now—but if he tried for something else, to actually _be_ with Lance, and he messed it up (because he would) or Lance came to his senses (he’d have to), then what? Would they keep him if Lance hated him? Would they keep him if he dared to start this up with Lance? If everything went wrong, would he still have a place here?

He couldn’t risk that.

“Lance, I don’t know if we should…”

Lance waited for him to finish, but when he didn’t, he dropped his forehead and said, “Yeah, Hunk doesn’t think so, either.”

Keith nodded, relief and disappointment warring over Lance’s agreement. “There are too many things that could go wrong.”

“Like what?”

He lifted a brow, offering the first option out of a hundred that sprung to mind. “Like your friends accusing me of brainwashing you if they find us kissing in the hallway?”

Instead of any reasonable reaction, a smile crept across Lance’s mouth. “But you _do_ want to kiss me in the hallway?”

Lance’s nose brushed his. Keith’s eyes fluttered shut. It always came back to this, Lance way too close and Keith melting in his hands.

“That’s not my point,” he murmured. “But yes.”

Lance released Keith’s hand to cradle his jaw. “How ‘bout just one?” His warm breath washed over him. “Until they trust you? And then they’ll just have to deal.”

“Um.” He paused, as if he could really bring himself to decline. “Yeah, okay.”

Keith barely finished speaking before Lance’s lips met his, hot and sure. And then just about every thought he’d ever had disappeared except for _Lance_.

He’d always been sort of terrified of the vulnerability that came with any sort of intimacy, but he was finding he didn’t mind it with Lance. It was just like in the hangar—he felt safe with Lance crowded up against him, lips slowly sliding against his.

Lance tilted Keith’s head back to deepen the kiss, before licking into his mouth like he couldn’t get enough of him. Keith breathed heavily through his nose, louder than the soft smack of their lips echoing in the empty corridor.

They kept going until Keith ran out of air, and he still wouldn’t have stopped if Lance hadn’t pulled back, panting, a satisfied grin on his swollen lips.

He stayed close, close enough to see the dark rims of his irises, close enough for his sea-salt scent to still be all that Keith could smell, close enough to taste—

Keith buried his hands in Lance’s hair and brought his mouth back to his. Lance hummed in surprise before it transformed into a moan. He gripped Keith’s hips, like he wanted him here, like Keith _belonged_ here, pinned between the castle wall and Lance’s body.

“Oh god.” Lance’s voice was deep when he pulled back again. He looked at Keith with hooded eyes, swallowing hard. “This is gonna be a problem.”

“What?”

“I don’t wanna stop kissing you.”

“Good.”

Lance’s smirk dissolved on the way back to Keith’s smiling mouth.

“Lance?” Hunk’s voice interrupted. “You down here?”

Keith turned to follow the sound, leaving Lance’s lips hitting his cheek.

Lance groaned against his face before dragging himself away, acting like it was a gargantuan amount of effort. “Yeah?”

Hunk popped around the corner. “We were gonna hang out in the lounge. You two coming?”

Lance nodded, psyching himself up for it. “Yeah.”

He held a hand out to Keith expectantly.

Keith blinked, still leaning against the wall, because his legs sure weren’t going to hold him up by themselves.

He hoped Lance’s optimism would rub off on him, because he needed to believe that Lance’s friends would trust him eventually, so the two of them could do that again. And again and again.

He accepted Lance’s hand after a moment and squeezed.

“You _sure_ you wanna put a hold on this?” Lance asked as they walked down the hall to Hunk.

Keith took a moment to remind himself why he thought waiting was necessary in the first place. If the team decided Keith was more trouble than he was worth, he was gone. And he’d have nothing.

“I’m sure,” Keith said. He looked at Lance, bright and beautiful, and who deserved the world, and none of what he’d gotten while prisoner. Lance, who saw Keith at his worst and brought out his best. “I can’t risk this—can’t risk losing you.”

Lance almost tripped over his own feet, but his grin only grew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, how many times did I rewrite that conversation with Keith and Lance?? A LOT. I hope the tone shifts were reasonable, because that was quite the ride, but many things needed to be said.  
> So next chapter is Lance POV, just a short one to wrap things up. That will probably be out tonight?? If not, then tomorrow (holiday Monday for Canada yeet).  
> Lemme know what you thought!


	15. Chapter 15

Lance was stretched out across Hunk and Pidge on the couch. Keith had picked an arm chair across from them, maybe to give Lance the option of hanging out with his friends, but probably to prevent Lance from snuggling against him and pissing people off.

And Lance didn’t want that, either. So he got where Keith (and Hunk) were coming from.

It was just that Lance wanted to make out with Keith. A lot. Not that he’d do that in front of the others, but he’d like the option. Didn’t he deserve to get what he wanted? After all he’d been though?

Hunk laughed at something Pidge said, and it bounced Lance’s head on his lap. Lance resettled and Hunk grinned down at him, endless affection and overflowing relief at having him back.

Then again, this was what Lance wanted, too. He wanted to be home. And he got that.

“So your eyes turn yellow in combat?” Pidge asked Keith, leaning forward.

“Yeah.” He shifted in his chair. “And in the dark.”

Pidge nodded. “Is that instinctive, or a conscious decision?”

“Uh, instinctive.”

“Is it adrenaline-fueled or purely situational? Or some Galra thing? Could you keep it up if you tried? Your vision improves, right? Are there—”

“Pidge, simmer down,” Lance yawned behind his hand. “He just got here.”

“So?”

Lance expected more of a defense, but when all Pidge did was jut out her chin to back up her argument, he snorted a laugh.

At least Pidge was making an effort. Allura had sat with them for ten tense minutes while Lance kept up light conversation until she swept out of the room, having reached her daily limit on breathing the same air as a Galra. Coran and Shiro left as the night wore on as well, after big hugs for Lance, leaving the four of them alone so Pidge could narrow in on Keith.

Lance yawned hugely.

“You wanna go to bed, bud?” Hunk asked.

Lance shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not tired.”

“Liar,” Pidge said.

Lance kicked her, because his feet were in her lap.

“’m fine,” Lance mumbled, comfy and cozy and back with his friends. His small, quiet room would never get him this relaxed.

So he snuggled in and drifted off, lulled into relaxation by soft chatter mixed with laughter.

 

When he woke, it was too much. Too quiet, too dark, his heart was pounding, terrified of something he couldn’t remember. Was he—he was back in the cell, wasn’t he? The escape and castle had all been some cruel dream and he’d never left the prison.

Some repetitive sound was beating his head, and it wasn’t until Keith’s face appeared in front of his, eyes bright gold, that he realized it was his name. Keith was saying his name.

“Lance?” Keith asked, brow drawn together. “It’s just a nightmare, it’s okay.”

Lance shook his head. Noticed the plush pillow under him. The fleece blanket tangled in his legs. “Lights on.”

The room brightened from night-time dimness until he could see the castle lounge clearly.

He released a long, shuddering breath.

“Lance,” Keith said gently, squinting against the light until his eyes grew dark again.

Lance took his hand, which had been hovering over him like he wasn’t sure where to touch. He sat up, shirt clinging to his sweaty back. “Where’d they go?”

“Bed. Hunk was gonna stay, but I said I was just gonna stay here anyway, so he went to his room,” Keith said. He leaned on the arm of the couch. “Is that alright?”

“Yeah.” Lance nodded, willing his panic to subside.

It took Keith touching his shoulder to realize he was shaking.

But he was fine. There was nothing wrong. He wasn’t being sad and mopey anymore. He was all happy, all the time.

He slapped a smile on. “But you know what that means.”

“What?”

“ _You_ have to cuddle with me now.”

The worried wrinkle between Keith’s brows smoothed out. “ _Right_ now?”

“Yeah, right now. Aren’t you tired?”

Keith shrugged. “Can’t sleep.”

A holo-tablet was lying on the coffee table, still on. He must’ve been scrolling through it while Lance slept.

Lance opened his arms, making grabby hands, desperate for more contact. “I’ll help.”

He laid back down and Keith shucked off his jacket before following obligingly, tucking his back against Lance’s chest so Lance could spoon him. Lance was still sweaty, but he wasn’t interested in waiting for it to dry, and Keith wasn’t complaining.

Lance curled an arm around Keith’s hip. He soaked up the solid warmth of him, the steadiness of his breath, the wide open space of the lounge. He’d never feel this safe in his quiet little room. All alone. Lance twined their legs together, sliding into place until there was no space left between them.

He hooked his chin over Keith’s shoulder. “Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff.”

“Yeah?” Keith’s fingers brushed the pulse point on his wrist. “This is helping?”

Lance smiled and popped a kiss on his cheek. “Uh huh.”

“Then go to sleep,” he said, skin heating against Lance’s.

“Not tired,” Lance yawned. “You should sing to me.”

“No.”

Lance chuckled.

So maybe Hunk was right. Maybe Lance didn’t need making out right now. Maybe he should wait until he wasn’t having nightmares and had a lower chance of hallucinating at any given moment. Maybe it was a good idea to wait until he felt like a real person before he attempted anything romantic.

But he was never gonna stop liking Keith.

Keith’s ear, tufted fur sprouting from his head, brushed Lance’s face. “Hey, can I touch your ears?”

“Will that help you sleep?” Keith asked doubtfully.

“No, I just…” He wanted to. “Is that weird, for Galra? You can touch mine, too.”

“I have no inclination to touch your ears.”

“That’s rude.”

Keith rolled in Lance’s embrace to face him. Their legs got un-entwined, but Lance quickly rectified that.

Keith tugged on Lance’s earlobe. “Fascinating,” he said flatly.

Lance tutted. “No, you gotta do it like—”

His finger drifted along the back of Keith’s ear. It was soft, almost delicate.

Keith shivered, Adam’s apple bobbing. Lance rubbed the thin, silky skin between his fingers and Keith buried his face in his shoulder.

“Is it okay?” Lance asked.

“Yeah,” Keith said, voice muffled by his shirt. “I just… I forgot I used to do that. When I was a kid.”

“Not anymore?”

“No, they made us stop.” His breath was warm against Lance’s neck. “It’s kid stuff, you know? When they’re nervous or scared.”

“Oh, like human kids suck their thumbs,” Lance said. He paused. “Is it weird? Should I stop?”

He shook his head. “Not if you don’t want to.”

Lance bit down on a grin. “You gonna start purring?”

He jerked back to glare at him. “Whuh—”

“It’s—”

“I know what purring is! I’m not a cat.”

Lance scratched behind his ear anyway.

Keith rolled his eyes, but wasn’t too offended to not return his head to its previous spot, somewhere between the pillow and the crook of his shoulder.

Lance muttered for lights out and the room dimmed again.

Quiet pulled, deep and looming, but Lance wasn’t ready for sleep. He was enjoying Keith’s proximity too much. He could melt into him, soaking up the comfort of his presence.

“So why can’t you sleep?” Lance asked softly.

Keith closed his eyes, lashes fanning across his cheeks. God, he was pretty. So damn pretty. Lance threaded his fingers through Keith’s thick hair, thumb brushing the base of his ears. Keith’s eyelids fluttered before he refocused his attention on Lance.

“I keep thinking I’ll wake up back in the barracks,” Keith said, barely above a murmur. “None of this feels real.”

“In a good way, right?”

“Yeah. I don’t wanna be anywhere else but here. But I can’t believe it all worked out for me. Not just that we both survived the escape—although I didn’t really see any outcome other than dying when I threw myself at Lotor—”

Lance tugged at a lock of his hair. “Yeah, _don’t_ scare me like that again.”

“I was saving you.”

“I don’t want you to save me by dying!” He was pretty sure he’d said that before. It would be great if Keith would listen to him for once.

Keith huffed, like Lance was the one being ridiculous. “Well, lucky for you, I… am the red paladin. So Red saved me.” He shook his head. “I still think I’m dreaming.”

Lance knew what he meant. He’d spent so much time in that cell convinced that he’d die there, and now he was just… out. Free. Like it had never happened.

Except it did.

But he got Keith out of it, and that was a silver lining. Finally finding the red paladin was bittersweet for the others, but Lance didn’t have to pretend to be happy about having Keith with him. He just _was_.

“We’ll take the lions out tomorrow, help it sink in,” Lance said as sleep finally came for him. “I promise you’ll be right here with me when you wake up.”

 

They snuck into their lions before breakfast. Stars hung like glitter flung across dark velvet as far as Lance could see, and farther still. The endless expanse of space was breath-taking, and even more so looking out at it from Blue’s pilot seat.

There was _so much_ , so much of everything, all at Lance’s fingertips. Nothing holding him back from saving the universe with his friends, with Keith.

Red drifted into his field of vision, lazily doing loop-de-loops through the air.

Keith’s quiet laughter filtered through the comms. Lance opened the video feed to see his soft smile, his fluffy hair flopping onto and away from his forehead as his lion back-flipped.

“Having fun there?”

“It’s Red,” Keith defended, trying to tamp down his awe. “She’s excited she found me.”

Blue echoed the sentiment, regarding both Lance and Keith.

“Me too,” Lance said.

Keith bit down on a smile. “I think you were right, you know.”

“Yeah, probably.” Keith shot him a flat look and Lance laughed, relenting. “About what?”

“You haven’t lived until you’ve seen space through the eyes of a giant robotic space cat.”

Lance grinned. “How about racing in one?”

Keith lifted a brow. “You think you can beat Red?”

“I think I can try.”

He smiled, sharp teeth flashing. “You’re on.”

And then they were off, flying fast and free through space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s that! A few last notes:
> 
> 1) [Here's a post](http://katranga.tumblr.com/post/163887508598/audience-of-one) to reblog on tumblr, if that’s something you do.
> 
> 2) A sequel/follow-up dealio is upcoming, mostly dealing with Lance’s recovery and Keith getting to know the others. It’s at six chapters rn, hopefully it won’t get any longer lol. A lot of it’s already written, it’s just about adding more scenes and polishing it off. You can expect that sometime this Fall. And you can always drop by my [tumblr](http://katranga.tumblr.com) to ask how it’s going—I will post snippets if asked! (Also it’ll keep me motivated lol).
> 
> 3) You may have noticed this is now part of a series, and that’s so you can subscribe to the series and will get notified when the follow-up gets posted! If you feel like it, idk, I’m not your mom.
> 
> So, once again, I want to thank you all for reading from the very bottom of my heart. I’ve never had such a huge response for a fic, and it’s just… so nice. So please, tell me how you liked it!


End file.
